Pomegranate
by the original coda
Summary: COMPLETE. From her lover's arms on the beaches of Troy, through a journey with Aeneas and a capture in Carthage, and back to Greece as a pawn of war, this is the tale of Briseiswho has travelled far to hear that Achilles did not die in Troy.
1. Pomegranate

**Pomegranate **

_Disclaimer: I do not own very much, certainly not any aspect of the Troy movie…_

* * *

Pomegranate.

Eat, he says, and offers her pomegranate. Chance, fate, luck? She thinks not.

When she was younger, Briseis would picture the world of mortals as an endless labyrinth of catacombs. Her cousins, quietly thrilled with her enthrallment with tales, would tell stories of the catacombs in Greece, deep and dark places in the earth, where cowards would go to hide, to live, to die. She would think of the world as a series of intertwined catacombs, connected by fine threads of passages like a tapestry. Her homeland Troy was a haven, a dark and warm cave well protected by its structure, and all else outside was beyond the barriers of that haven – _beyond_.

The problem, she has come to realize, with catacombs is that there is never anything completely out of reach.

And so she is here, sheltered in a haven within a haven – the warrior Achilles' tent – and she is a stranger. In all other places in the Greek enemy camp she might believe herself to be still within the reaches of her haven of Troy, but under this wood she has been brought someplace else. She has never been a stranger in her own country; she has never so much as _left_ her country, and in the refuge of her own mind, Briseis wonders if her vows to Apollo carry any weight at all: "_I need know no home, for all I need is the love of the gods to guide me in my mortal path…"_

Quietly, she likens herself to Persephone, stolen away and trapped in the underworld.

The queen of the underworld, she says silently to herself, was never one of her preferred goddesses, though they are all to be respected. She glances over at her companion to see if he has heard her, but he makes no gesture and has no response.

(On the plate near her feet is the food he has left her. Nestled surreptitiously amongst them is the pomegranate fruit. Within it is far more than three seeds.)

She stands shakily, and shifts her weight from one leg to the other. She can remember ever since she was small how she was instructed to stand straight and tall, her shoulders thrown back, because the weight of Troy's dignity rested upon the shoulders of the royalty. It was their vice to bear it. And bear it she has, _but,_ Briseis reminds herself, she is not in Troy, she is in the realm of Achilles. And it is near to him that she walks, slowly, so that she can look on his face. How many men have looked upon this face as their last image of life? She decides not to consider it, for there are far too many implications, and her mind is cluttered enough.

It is then that she notices the blade within the folds of his discarded garments, glinting with dark promise. She tests its weight in her hands, grasps the handle, tries to find a hold on it that is familiar so that she may be comfortable using it.

Using it? She asks herself. On whom, Achilles? Briseis is deprecating: a priestess of Apollo, even if fallen and tempted from her purity with pomegranate seeds, is not the fated one to destroy _this_ being.

He sleeps on.

She needs more courage. She has used it all up in the past two days, her stores ransacked and emptied by these invading Greeks, her walls left empty and naked for all to know "_this was Briseis, priestess of Troy"_, and barely has words to match with her captor when he _is_ awake and talking. _"I thought you were a dumb brute."_

As Briseis kneels by the plate at the opposite side of the tent again, she runs over the tale of Persephone and Hades again.

(_"Hades had abducted Persephone in hopes of making her his queen, but Zeus, king of all gods, demanded that the wishes of Hades –his brother- and Demeter –Persephone's mother- compromise, for Demeter was goddess of the cornfield and was causing drought for the mortals in her sadness." Priam looks at her with clear blue eyes. "Persephone was to return to her mother forever, but Hades proclaimed that she had eaten three seeds of a pomegranate from his orchard, and had therefore consumed the food of the dead, and could never truly return to the living".)_

With care, she cuts the pomegranate into smaller pieces of succulent red fruit, their mere appearance suggestive. Briseis holds a slice in her fingers, slender, with a drop of juice slowly trickling, and contemplates. She stares at the seeds within the flesh.

She needs courage to do what she has to do. In a moment of odd, non-linear thinking, Briseis thinks she needs to first belong to this forbidden world of Achilles before she has the potential to escape it.

_Cut his throat_, is a whisper in her mind. _Make your mark, your death will come anyway._

Briseis eats the seeds slowly, and then turns back to the pallet.

_

* * *

_

Do it, he says. She presses the blade against the skin of his throat.

"It's the simplest thing." A sliver of blue from beneath the shaded eyelids, and she knows that he's already awake, already calculating. She's made a gross miscalculation. "Do it."

_Persephone lost_, she thinks absently as he grasps her shoulders, _you are Persephone lost_. Her mind is curiously detached as she watches the sinews play like liquid iron under his skin, and she wonders idly, who is this man?

More importantly, she wonders, why did Persephone succumb to the underworld? Who did she come to accept it, to love it, to love Hades?

In one moment, Briseis is staring at the blade at this warrior's throat, and in another, in the moment when he retakes the control of this domain and pulls _her_ under, she realizes that her blade against his throat is almost a farce. He is humouring her, is probably laughing at her in his mind's eye, because in his arms and in his grip, she knows the truth: he could break her into a thousand pieces with a thought, and toss them away into the sand. Briseis no more.

_Damned pomegranate_, she thinks, and then his lips are on hers.

He could break her – but instead he shifts closer to her, the hands that know more killing than touching pushing her further into the pallet, and she knows the mortal warmth of his skin. It is like the touch of the flat of a blade – full of foreboding promise for the future. He could break her – but instead he moves like water over her, a true Greek, and suddenly the cloth of her garments are lacking. And he knows, slowly drawing the hem up over her skin. He could break her – and he almost does, for in this unexpected and guile-induced mortal tenderness is wrapped a stone-strong desire that threatens to overpower them both, and because of it Achilles kisses her like an owner, then like a lover, and then like a broken man, and then all three together. She feels that it will wrench her apart before letting go

When he does lets her free for but a moment, she turn her head to the side. He takes her over like a wave, hands and lips and skin moving above her, on her neck and on her body. When she summons the strength within her, she wants to assert herself, refuses to be a Persephone and surrender to this ungodly pleasure, and states rather flatly, "You _can't_ break me. You _can't_."

He does not stop: baring her skin, touching her skin, learning more about her than only her biting tongue (he has tasted that tongue) – nor does she stop him. He laughs, a bit smothered by her skin beneath his lips, and answers, "I can break you in a second."

There is a pain, sharp like a freshly forged knife, within her, and Briseis asks herself if Achilles is trying to prove his point, because if so, he can stop. But when he moves, this knife moves within her as well, and it spreads and fuses with the very core of her being and becomes a wordless pleasure. Lost in it, she hears nothing, not her own voice, not the outside, only _his_ breath by her ear, and then, "I can break you, but I won't."

It goes on and on and on, and he holds her jaw from tossing from side to side. Briefly, Briseis thinks she might understand what Persephone may have been thinking in choosing Hades.

* * *

Achilles notices when she wakes – he notices even when she shifts in her sleep – and watches her as she tentatively shifts out from his loose grasp. He observes in mild curiosity as she shifts across the tent, her feet sinking slightly in the sand - priestess-no-more. With her back turned to him, she picks up a seed of red fruit off the plate, and takes a slow bite.

Pomegranate.


	2. Regret

**Regret  
**_Disclaimer: I do not own…. blah blah, bliddy blah, I'm so stuffy, give me a scone._

* * *

Even though her eyes are closed, Briseis can feel him watching her. He has been watching her for a long time now.

In her mind, she is not ready to open her eyes just yet, to acknowledge his presence and intent, to allow conversation to validate what has happened between them.

_I do not regret it, I will not regret it_, she thinks. All her life, Briseis has lived by the belief that in order to live full and to live well, she must never regret the decisions she has made. Inviting Achilles to take her body was one of them, and she will not regret it.

Achilles' second, Eudoras, pushes through the heavy slats of the tent threshold. _My lord…_Briseis hears, rather than sees, him stop and push outside again, and Achilles goes to join him. Left alone, she shifts under the covers, feeling both the mildly satisfying pain between her legs and the flame of a blush colouring her face at the thought of _another_ man seeing her body near unclothed.

However, she supposes, Achilles would probably not look too lightly on another man appraising his property.

_His property_. Briseis doesn't like to think of herself as the object and instrument of someone else, if anyone but her patron god Apollo. For now, she refuses to think of herself as a captive, and a woman being locked into submission. She doesn't want to think that way because it infers that she has no choices to make – and therefore all the regret to take. And yet, Achilles' startling tenderness and care causes wonder.

Alone in his tent, she will be honest with herself: she has begun to think slightly fondly of him. It's an unnerving truth, but a truth nonetheless. Not surprising, actually. She has told him that he is like all other men to her, but now Briseis realizes the magnitude of that lie: no man has possessed the strength of self to stand before her proudly, completely not humble and possessed by the truth of his own greatness. No man has touched her with that same confidence, in both himself and in herself. No man has treated her like an equal in a situation whose odds are so horrendously stacked against her, and no man has cared for her completely without cause.

Her eyes are open, and full of confusion, when Achilles walks back into the tent. He looks at her intently, and inclines his head in greeting when he sees that she is awake, and he reaches for a goblet of water. At least, she thinks it is water. He is smirking very lightly, "Good, you are awake. I was wondering how long you were willing to keep up the pretence of sleep."

Face burning, she raises herself up on her elbows. "What pretence?"

He smiles, but does not answer, and instead walks over to the side of his pallet to hand her the goblet. She takes a thirsty sip as he looks down at her, leaning forward to briefly smell the scent of her hair. Jasmine.

They stare when he leans back, and Briseis hands back the goblet. "I would have thought you'd be gone by now, killing my countrymen and laying siege to our walls."

Achilles shrugs, and walks across the tent, rolling the muscles of his broad shoulders, as he answers lazily, "Not today." A careless glance back at her, and then, "And haven't I already battered your walls, and found them to be…lacking?" His eyes rove over the state of the bedcovers.

The heat of another blush threatens to spread to her neck, but she presses on, "And my countrymen?"

The water goblet is placed back beside the platter of food, now refreshed with fruits and breads. He answers seriously, "I've given them the gift of their lives today, but tomorrow may not be so lucky." His back is turned to her.

There is a moment of silence, but her mind is alive with images from the night before. She is itching to get ahead of him somehow, and casts out, "Then you lied to me last night."

"How so?"

Briseis draws the covers tightly around her shoulders, a tantalizing strip of bronze skin showing from her neck to her sternum. "You told me that you would kill many Trojans today."

He turns and laughs, amusement in his eyes. He might have been pacifying a child: "Would you like me to go and sacrifice a few to validate our actions last night? It's of no consequence to me."

She misinterprets his expression for one of patronization, and falls into silence. It doesn't matter in that moment, because the muffled call of _my lord!_ comes from outside, and his attention is immediately drawn away.

But then, the most curious and telling thing happens: he has started towards the threshold when he suddenly looks back at her, this small and fragile bird-like thing on his bed. The same soft expression flashes in his eyes, and he takes the few steps to cross the tent to her side, runs his fingers over her cheekbones and tilts her head up. He admires the curve made from her shoulders to her neck to the lovely shape of her jaw, and then kisses her softly, then casually leaves her to her thoughts.

She has a great many thoughts, none of which are remotely helpful.

* * *

Even in her enemy's camp, Briseis feels stricken by uselessness. The sun is high in the air and beaming down on her, and she is not sure of what she should be doing. Not sure of the protocol for being a captive, not sure of her place, save for at Achilles' side. She doesn't want to admit it, but this 'captive's life' is far easier when he is around.

The Greek soldiers at day are nothing like their counterparts at night: they are consumed by the work at hand, barely sparing the sharply frail woman standing outside the great Achilles' tent a glance. They are harsh and stony in their own way, and all somehow fashioned the same, as if they have been chiselled from a different stone, but all by the same sculptor. Achilles, she realizes, does not belong in that sphere. He is no mere soldier, not made of stone but of a smooth and unyielding iron, fashioned by Daedalus, father of Icarus.

Near to the shore, an unshaven man is taking stock of the ships. He is looking at her, a flash of something dangerous in the whites of his eyes, and Briseis clasps her arms closer around her body. _This_ feeling is what she had expected out of being a Greek captive, _this_ terrifying uncertainty and vulnerability, not the haven she had found within the iron of Achilles' arms.

The man visibly licks his lips at her, and she turns away. Briseis sees no familiar face amongst the nearby men, but why should she recognize anybody?

She begins to discern the character of the men around her, and their collective attitude towards her. All of them, save for the one at the shore with the ships, keep their eyes cast away from her, their posture wary and suspicious, but also predominantly cautious and avoidant. Briseis wonders why that might be.

_Achilles_.

"I would not recommend wandering alone outside until the men are adjusted to the presence of a woman." She whirls, and he is standing beside her, blue eyes serious and matted hair askew. She nods absently, and then looks away.

His fingers dart up to grasp securely at her jaw, turning her eyes back to his. There is no discernable expression in them, just a cold and clear blue, blue like the water. He lets go of her once she can maintain the eye contact on her own. "You have not been bothered?"

She is silent. _No, she has not been bothered but…_that feeling of discomfort will not go away, and her glance darts inadvertently back towards the shoreline, back towards the unshaven man at the ships. Even still, Briseis shakes her head.

She doesn't know it, but Achilles has seen every shift of her expression, and has followed every movement of her eyes. He sees the shifty glance to the shoreline, and marks it in his mind for later correction. But at the present, he draws his arms up to her shoulders and steers her back into the tent.

The flaps fall back into place, and her sense of discomfort evaporates almost instantly, because his lips are back at hers, and the metal haven of his arms clasped securely around her limbs.

* * *

Long after it is finished, he holds her until she is completely content, wondering to himself why he was spending his time in such a matter, and refuting in kind, why should he not? This is a woman like no other, and merits the full capacity of his attentions.

Which reminds him of something.

Achilles slips out from the covers, arranging her limbs comfortably and at her small moan of protest, mutters, "There is something I must take care of."

* * *

When she next lays eyes on the unshaven soldier, late in the afternoon, and many interludes with Achilles later, she has a transcendental epiphany. I have power.

Briseis doesn't know how he knew, but it seemed as though Achilles had the mastery of both his men and of her to see everything.

The soldier is sporting an unclean bandage about his head, spotted darkly with what must be blood, and covering his entire left eye. She stands outside in a loose dress, and he does not look at her once. He passes her by, and all Briseis can think of is, _he did not have that bandage before._

She has no idea what Achilles thinks of her. She sees and notes that expression in his eyes, but she has too much of an approximation of him as the demi-god warrior to understand what the quality of that expression is. She knows his tenderness, his protectiveness, and sees him as her haven – more so, she admits shamefully, than that of Troy. But whatever he thinks of her, it is something that has tired her to him –and him to her- and it gives her power.

Power to do as she wills in her enemy's camp, because Achilles cares for her. Power to say what she wills to the Greeks, because Achilles cares for her. Power to defy even the great Agamemnon, because Achilles cares for her. _She_ is the reason that the Greeks did not taste victory yesterday – and yesterday was before Achilles had ever touched her. What could she cause now, what power did she wield? It was terrifying.

_No_, she thinks later, again in his arms. _No, I do not regret._


	3. Chariot

**Chariot  
**_Disclaimer: I still do not own any of this._

* * *

War isn't all blood and iron and death. There are times when it can get sweet: she lies with him sheltered by the blanket of night and a lack of courtiers to watch her, to judge her. He touches the curve of her cheek and she asks him questions in soft tones –Am I still your captive? She says— and though he remains impassive, there is a finality to him in this moment. When he corrects, "You're my guest…" there's that suggestion of undeclared sweetness, and she smiles. But even in this truce of an alliance, the lines are drawn. Life, reality, are not forgotten. And so the sweet becomes bittersweet.

Earlier they had played a makeshift game of chess. Achilles lifted the board and pieces off the pack of a dead Greek under his command –not one of his own, however—and they sat opposing each other on either side of the board. They would peer into each others eyes thoughtfully, strategizing and pondering, both of them noting similar discrepancies between the board and this life. There were no sacred squares on the board to denote temples, and the pieces were only roughly-hewn bits of wood with no loyalties, ambitions or loves. They were equally matched and there were no walls to hide behind. There were rules, and a winner and a loser.

(Achilles, of course, won the game.)

When she is older, Briseis thinks from within his arms, and the war has been over for a long time, these moments will be difficult to remember. She has never suffered from painful nostalgia before. She'll lie in her future bed and see the slaughter of her city's faithful, or the arrogant visage of the Greek king Agamemnon, or the view from the legendary warrior Achilles' bed, or the red-hot poker the soldiers had wished to brand her with, and she will think _this is war_. It is not about blood or politics or ethics. To talk about war, she'd have to talk about arrogance and hate and trust and love and betrayal. Now Briseis understands her cousin's consternation on those days after battles when Hector would arrive back sweaty and creased with thought, and how he could say nothing when asked by a fellow, "How was the war? What did you think of today's battle?"

(Or, if he did answer, he's say, "Complicated. It was complicated today, just as it is any day." And he would turn to Andromache, and her serenity would smooth the creases of his face over for the next day.)

And when Achilles calls her his guest, the complicated politics of the war begin to weigh down on her. She can almost feel the sagging of her shoulders, pushing her further into his arms and further into oblivion. The title of 'guest' suggests her own Trojan volition is involved with this affair, and she is not sure if she is ready for that kind of responsibility yet. "In Troy, guests can leave whenever they want."

"Would you leave now?"

Of course she won't.

* * *

There is no happy part of war, Briseis thinks. Not at its outset, nor at its conclusion, and certainly not in the midst of it, which is where most people do the dying. There is no happiness even for someone as untouchable as Achilles, she will learn. They are all affected because they are all human.

She had thought she had overheard the tail end of a happy war story during the morning. One of the men recounted his tale near the fire while she was taking a walk. She had thought the tale might fortify her position, might give her some strength to match her lover's:

"I met the woman who would be my wife in Corinth, when Agamemnon finally chose to take it. She, a Corinthian, and I, a Mycenaean, and she still tended to my wounds inflicted by her people, and when Achilles led us to victory and it was time to come home, she came with me."

The soldier stands up to murmurs in response, and makes for one of the barracks tents. That was a pleasant story, Briseis thinks, and she begins to walk back to her own tent thus protected and enamoured. Until: "It's a nice tale, of course, but he forget to mention the real ending," a soldier says to the gathering. "That happy ending…there's too much peace there. Nobody comes out of war pristine and loaded with spoils. Or at least not for very long. His Corinthian wife bore him a son, but when she returned –unaccompanied—to her home, her family sole the babe from its cradle and dropped it from the cliffs because it was tainted with the blood of Mycenae." The men roar. "You'd think she were Spartan."

That, Briseis thinks as she walks away, is a _real_ happy story from the war. So she is not surprised, then, to see Achilles lose his young cousin to the war. What she does not foresee is that she, too, is part of this war. And she has not lost enough to tell her tale yet. When Briseis hears the name of Patroclus' killer and witnesses for herself the maddened glint in Achilles' eyes, she realizes that she is about to lose something else.

* * *

After Achilles is dressed and gone, Briseis makes her doomed attempt to escape. What goes through her head are moments both real and imagined, moments played all together and at the same time, moments with no real end.

She sees her beloved cousin Hector, a man of honour and love, probably the only man she knows truly deserving of the happiness in the life he leads. She sees her lover, the near-invincible Achilles, killing him.

Or Andromache, beloved, wise and beautiful Andromache, a woman Briseis calls mentor and closest friend. She sees her grief, her tears, and in her wise mind, she sees that Andromache can see Hector. Briseis is suddenly glad that Troy does not know of her role here in the Greek camp.

Or Achilles himself, a statue on his chariot as she pleads with him. Hysteria serves for nothing. He guides his horses ruthlessly and fearlessly, like Apollo himself, and she sees herself sink to her knees in the sand, the grains running through her fingertips. That familiar feeling of uselessness, of weakness, and she thinks, "what now?"

In that sense of desperation, Briseis decides to try to escape. What does she have to lose, she asks herself, but does not find the logic heartening in the least. Not while her cousin is not so far away, dying on Achilles' sword. She brings nothing from the tent with her, but does slip one final seed of pomegranate under her tongue, promising a solemn oath to Zeus that is she is successful, she will never eat the fruit again.

When she walks aimlessly outside, the men ignore her just as they ever have. As she nears the slope that divides the beach of Troy from the plains, Briseis unwillingly begins remembering sensations.

Achilles' light and confident touch over the column of her neck.

The exotic silk of the pallet they slept upon.

His helmet, tossed haphazardly in the sand.

Fingers constantly in her hair, lifting and smelling and playing.

The warmth of having him beside her at night.

The platter upon the ground.

Briseis looks around at the Greek soldiers, and wonder if she should start running. If she does and they notice, they will catch her. But what does she have to lose?

Achilles, seemingly asleep, and then, _Do it_.

She picks up the pace. When she is about halfway up the slope and with a mind blissfully blank like wave wet sand, she gains hope. Hope, in war, is a dangerous thing, because: "You girl!"

She stops for a single moment and considers turning around, laughing this initiative off and remaining under the guise of 'it never happened'. But Briseis thinks of Hector, thinks of his courage, and decides that she will never become the coward of the royal Trojan family. It is a moment supersaturated with colour and silence and truth, and she begins to run.

Of course, she doesn't get very far before they catch her.

They toss her roughly, but with a small sense of consideration (she is their lord's current lover, as it were), as if she were a petulant child, back into the tent. There she will wait, like the rest of them, for the inevitable return of Achilles.

* * *

The first time she sees him next, Achilles hasn't been told about her rather pathetic escape attempt. Briseis didn't care, she was ready for his anger, and she was far to occupied by memories of her cousin. She cannot bar to look at his killer, and she steals out of the tent to stand by the shore, tears running and sticking unprettily to her cheeks. She doesn't care.

It doesn't take long for Achilles to get up to speed, and by then she has heard the chattering of the men, heard of Hector's defeat, heard that his body has been dragged up beside his tent. Her body is shaking uncontrollably when Achilles comes to her, and asks her his questions in a voice that is so confident and strong that she wants to scream at him.

"Tell me why I should ever bother with you again."

She says nothing, afraid of the inelegant and undignified noises that may come out of her throat before words might be formed. He is not impressed. "Your attempt at leaving this camp speaks very well for itself. Why should I not cut you down where you stand? I've killed women before, it would be no novelty."

Unsurprised, she murmurs more into her chin than to her interrogator, "You have no right."

She flinches when he laughs, cold and hard and impersonal, like the monster she first suspected him to be before he laid hands upon her, and flinches further when he says, "You're mine. I have every right to do with you as I please."

"I have done you no wrong, so you have no right to hurt me. At least in that, you might somehow justify taking my cousin—because he killed yours." The tears continue, and she thinks fleetingly of Andromache. "And the men in battle that you kill—they would kill you as well. But I will not be a part of this. I refuse." Her chin shakes despite the hard set of her shoulders.

It is terrifying to her that he wears the same mask of impassiveness now as he does in moments of tenderness. The only thing that has changed is the words out of his mouth, and she has learned not to place much on the value of words. "I do not kill based on right and wrong, or on what is justified. I killed the priests when they were unarmed in your temple, did I not? I am ruled by nothing except my own judgment – what are you to do if that judgment turns against you?" He says, and begins to circle her as if she were prey.

_Have I been a fool as well as a traitor?_ She thinks. _Did I truly believe that I was not letting a coldblooded killer make love to me? When did I become such a fool?_

"Do you have nothing to say in face of your own death?" He challenges, in front of her and his face close to hers.

And she snaps back, though without the strong timbre in her voice – hers is broken, and admittedly so. "And will you drag _my_ body from the back of your chariot when you are finished? If you judge me by the same principles, will you exact the same punishment and say, 'this was Briseis, who defied and insulted the great Achilles one too many times'?"

The look of impassivity shifts into something unrecognizable, and if it were not for the waves, Briseis would have imagined that time had stopped just for this meeting.

He turns and walks back to the tent, but not before grasping her shoulders and answering in harsh tones: "If you think that I would release you from my reach so easily, then you are the fool I had not foreseen you to be."


	4. Of A Warrior

**Of A Warrior**  
_Disclaimer: I do not own…

* * *

_

Warriors are not only men of men, they are flesh and metal together. The line that serves to pry the fingers from the hilt of a blade is smoothed over like sand by every moment or image withheld from battle. Warriors are seething masses of nostalgia, of memories, and each one binds them closer to the wound and to the pain that caused it in the first place. Warriors are a rare breed when searching for the pure, and Achilles is one of them. He knows it like he knows the texture of a spear in hand or a shield pressed to his back. It's a familiar truth, warm and certain, and he has little to regret since he knows the path that will bring him what he wants: glory, which he has, and immortality, which is never ascertained. At the onset of this evening, he changes his routine and sits at one of the fires with his men, the ones who matter most because they are equals – men forged by the same carving hand of war – the hand of Ares. Achilles thinks of Patroclus, but thinks of him idly, just in the same manner as the way he palms his friend's beads time and time again. Warriors know the universal truth of the blade – that by the blade both pain and pleasure and hurt and satisfaction are brought about. And as a warrior, Achilles knows that on Hector's blade his cousin has been taken from him – _pain ­_- and that on his own blade he has taken Hector – _vengeance_. In this, he is satisfied, because he is a warrior and not a lover in his essence, though either has qualities of the other, and he can now begin to smother his rage.

* * *

Warriors are men determined by the necessity of their circumstances. For the most part, they are not born knowing that they have been wrought to take life in the name of their cause: they grow and are nurtured just as any other, but when the need is imminent, they will not deny the primal aspect of their humanity. They take up the weapon and assume themselves, and become the men that they are. Warriors are not soldiers, because soldiers are defined and thought of as mindless peons, when warriors know and fight and live their lives in name of a transforming cause that is worn like a fur-lined cape across the backs of their shoulders. Warriors are not mere men, and fear nothing but the possibility of not doing what they have been born to do.

So when she steps back into the tent after night falls (she always stays inside at night because she is afraid, afraid that though she is visibly under his protection, the men will forget themselves and seek to take her from him), he does not shy – in any sense of the word – away from asking her what has made him furious.

"Why did you run?"

She takes a handful of Greek pistachio nuts from the platter and goes to crouch on a layer of folded fabrics, her straight limbs curling inward and giving the appearance that she is curling into herself, when, in fact, she is. He takes her silence not as an answer but as a weight to her answer, and she cracks open several nuts without once looking him in the eye, though he follows her every movement with the lazy watchfulness of a blue-eyed cat.

Then, she begins to mumble slowly and in quiet desperation, her words directed into her lap. "I knew you to be this man." She looks up at him a single time, ten casts her free hand about the room. "I knew before all this that you were a warrior, that your hands are made for killing. I knew this." It is as if she is more trying to convince herself of her own words than to explain to him, so he probes unforgivingly, but not cruelly.

"And?"

Briseis wrings her hand helplessly, spilling nuts into the sand, before she catches herself at the pathetic motion and holds herself with a spontaneous regal air, trying to channel her cousin's widow. She sounds shamed, but before all else, undecided. "And I still did not resist…" She shrugs at him, her sharp collarbones ticking out at the movement.

He rolls his eyes because he is not concerned with a woman's traditionally petty qualms concerning intimacy. Achilles does not care to consider what baggage she believes comes along with it, though there is a palpable sense of baggage between them, whatever it may be. "I would say differently: your resistance in just about every matter has made many lives difficult." His words are light, but his eyes tell a different tale.

Where Briseis might have immediately taken up the torch and started sniping back at him, the circumstances issue a call for her honour. She will not humour him, and she fixes him with a long, unforgiving stare that leaves eons of maturity quelling behind her pupils. "You murdered my cousin." It is a flat truth.

"_He_ murdered mine – a boy untested in battle." Achilles' voice carries a sharp edge to it, a kind of teeth behind tightened lips.

She ventures further into explaining her actions to him, because she feels that she has to, though she does not understand why. "You murdered my cousin…I could not lie idle and wait to welcome his murderer back into my arms!" Briseis sounds desperate, a shade of confused, as if willing him to lend her his reasoning so she may end this terrible crisis of ethics and conscience that she has been suffering through.

With a short bark of a laugh, he notes, "Your courage displays itself again." Achilles' eyes are bright and alive, as if he is invigorated by her every outburst, soaking it up like spilt blood upon the dust.

Briseis, by contrast, darkens, and responds more to herself, "Courage or not, this remains a miserable place."

"Is it so miserable?" He suddenly moves to her side and she watches him approach openly, as if she were a wounded animal that will not fight its predator because there is no purpose in it. His fingers lightly touch upon her chin, and bring her reluctant eyes up to his own. "Don't concern yourself with the affairs of weapons, or life and death. It's out of your hands, and it always has been." His hand lightly dusts upon her skin to cup the curve of her cheek, to touch the tendrils of her dark curls upon the back of his hand.

That, she has nothing to say to, mostly because it's the truth, so he takes the chance to slide his hand down the smooth column of her neck and slip his fingers underneath the cloth of her dress. Even still she has little to say, and all of it is kept vaulted behind those dark eyes – but he likes it better when she's open and fiery and unafraid. Achilles considers absently if he might have made the wrong decision with her cousin but then promptly dismisses it, in favour of coaxing her out of herself with lips on lips and skin on skin.

It works, because for Briseis, the sensation is just as it was before this terrible day. She drudges up the past night and immerses herself in it, in love, and in him.

* * *

A warrior is not only a lover of the sword, but the perfect warrior is a shrewd tactician. Just as a warrior is separate from a soldier – the soldier knows no art or skill or pattern behind the movement of his sword or spear or axe, he only reacts…and hopes that his reaction will be favoured by the fates. A warrior leaves no choice to the hands of the fates and instead calculates and considers –sometimes within hours and sometimes within seconds- in order to ensure that the is no decision to be made but that _he will be victorious_.

Priam, the old – and, by Achilles' approximation, foolish – king of Troy visits his tent and kisses his hands, and Achilles tucks this occasion into the back of his mind. Without his own consent, Achilles finds himself out of his own control –humanized- and looks on the face of his enemy Hector only to see both an equal and a beloved relation of his own beloved—beloved? Achilles tucks both the moment of his humanity and his slip of the tongue in his mind as well. And, earlier, when Briseis slipped out from under the covers and from the weight of his arms to dress and nearly throw herself outside of his tent, he thought naught of it, until he stepped out himself and witnessed her kneeling in the wet sand by the water, retching into the waves – and that, he tucked into his mind as well. And when their eyes caught each other once she had run her face and hands through the seawater and even Achilles himself felt something inside him soften like he had never known, he noted it closest of all.

And when Priam lays eyes upon his niece in the Greek camp, Achilles involuntarily summons up these tucked-away notes from the recesses of his mind and makes a shrewd and tactical decision – he lets her go. This is not the only decision he makes, evidently, because no warrior would deny himself permanently of what he desires, wants or loves, but he realizes what must be done for both he and his lover to be satisfied. And so he clasps her hands and gives her a token – Patroclus' beads – and then she goes, a dazed look in her eyes and a knowing look in his.

Because Achilles is a warrior, and this is what a warrior is.


	5. Pain

**Pain  
**_Disclaimer: See previous chapters; I don't like being redundant.

* * *

_

Pain.

Not clichéd, not historical, not descriptive, just PAIN. Those terrible, gruesome four-letter words that all respectable people instruct you not to use. PAIN. There is no salvation to this PAIN.

Briseis shifts on the stone seat at the height of the staggering room, of the staggering scene, soreness left by stiffness and pain left by heartache making resounding tremors up and down the landscape of her torso. She is left rigid by the instinctual cordillera that her body now prefers to form at jagged intervals -a feeling she doesn't enjoy- in which she keeps her spine ramrod straight in order to show honour and dignity for the process at hand. For Andromache, who sits so stiffly beside her. For Hector, whose eyes are covering by the coins for Charon the boatman, whose body begins to burn atop the great pyre. For Troy, which contracts in its great outpouring of grief. And so she will not resign herself to the fluidity of her muscles and does not sink back into the seat, buts sits straight for this Troy, her Troy, a wounded Troy and a Troy she has betrayed.

Here, among the evidence of her past –the gods she had so respected painted upon the walls- Briseis feels as if she's trapped in the gridlines of a memory. The sharp edges of this box, the palace she once called home and the hall she now calls Hector's funeral pyre, are making her nervous and claustrophobic, but -as she has felt for a while now- she will not voice any word about it. After all, to whom would she confess the plagues her mind endures? To Paris, the suffering but ridiculously and still endearingly ignorant lovesick fool? To Priam, the god-devoted king of tunnel vision, who would betray his gods for nothing and would never identify with her plight? To Andromache, the greatest of all sufferers?

The walls are so starkly plain to her that she has been slowly eroded down into a realm of horror at the bleached bone effect surrounding her. Hers is a world of shifting and interlacing colours, moving together and apart like the brilliant colours of a vase juxtaposed onto falling folds of silk from the Asia Minor. The walls are all wrong.

And so she sits, thinking these thoughts, at Hector's funeral.

Andromache, dear Andromache, remains composed – she is a terrifying contradiction, and the very definition of regal to Briseis. She is selfishly wishing for her cousin to throw her a sign that might purport a celebratory move forward to make everything perfect perfect perfect again. But Andromache's features themselves -smooth and unmarred cheekbones and symmetrical forehead, unbroken and perfectly convex in the proper places, like her own- are as if carved of a curious mixture of rock and ice. And Briseis knows that rock and ice cannot be gay and celebratory. Not with the death of their owner's husband, as is the case with Andromache. Briseis retreats into herself.

I am made of rock too, she decides for herself: many layers of differing rock types. At the very core she loves her cousins so dearly that the rock of her emotions could be squeezed for tears, but the other layers shielding her have other business to take care of. She is locked inside her own reflexive shell - a cell of self-protectiveness that she knows nobody will know how to break. She must have this shell, because if any Trojan knew of her feelings towards Hector's killer, she would probably be stoned to death.

Her crazy metaphors and out-of-control personifications are making her smile. Briseis is wondering if she is going crazy.

Beside her, Andromache continues to sit immobile, tears slowly falling.

* * *

Briseis hadn't ever seen it coming. Not in a million years.

She was young, successful and devoted and beautiful in her own right, out in the real world (having built a life away from the royals and with the gods), and was riding off the high of so many people telling her how well 'things' were going to go for her - the generic, anonymous nature of the term "things" going unnoticed. She only laugh good-naturedly and reciprocate to her complimentors in similar kind out of manners and propriety, also accepting their complimentary goblets of wine and making astute, needling sarcastic observations around the alcohol in her mouth. Dizzying vortexes of people moving in and out of her life as if they were merchants down any old obscure trade route, so much life flowing like alcohol, so many purposes to be executed perfectly and all at once. "Things" weren't supposed to have gone this way. She had decided to become a priestess of Apollo, for who could be more protected than a maiden of the sun? So far away from the royalty was the entire proposal that it became a dazzling and alluring commodity that she hadn't the self-control to resist: it had taken less than a few days of piety for it all to come crashing down under the swords of the Greeks, and for her temptation to come in the form of a Greek demi-god warrior –

"Briseis?"

Andromache is blocking the light from the window, but she doesn't mind. Briseis turns her head in the appropriate, respectful distance, and opens her eyes.

That beautiful face. Carved of rock and ice. It could tell stories to burst the dimensions into tiny pieces of shattered glass and those smooth, rounded pebbles she used to find under the light waves of the Aegean Sea. Briseis sits up from her bed as her cousin sits beside her.

In those moments, she is filled with such hope that perhaps she might bring some light into her dear cousin's eyes, because it is all that Andromache deserves, but Andromache is wiser than all of them and she sees all. And after a few moments, she asks her, "You are not wearing your priestess robes anymore?"

And all is shattered.

There is silence, and Briseis will not meet the eyes of her cousin. But when she does…

"Dear Andromache…"

As Briseis says her name, Andromache stands from the bed and walks towards the door. In seeing her walk, Briseis knows that Priam must have told her where he had found their little cousin, the lovely priestess, and in whose company. Whose eyes had looked upon her so softly before they had driven away from the Greek camp on the chariot carrying Hector's body.

Andromache turns her head as she goes, and says, "There was nothing you could do." And she makes to leave the room.

"There was."

She stops on her path, and slowly turns to look at the young woman. Her eyes are unreadable.

Briseis will tell no lies to her beloved cousin. She stands, and with a curious shining of tears not yet fallen in her eyes, she walks towards Andromache, as she says, the words unspoken speaking volumes, "And when he returned,"

- _after killing your husband and my beloved cousin – _

"He asked me what I had to say if he should kill me…"

- _because I had tried to run away while he was gone – _

"and I asked him if he would drag _my_ body from his chariot…"

- _as he did to your Hector – _

"because if that was what was done to my cousin, then I deserved worse for my crimes."

Briseis feels very young standing before the wife of her killed cousin, standing under her scrutiny, though it is what she deserves. And she wonders why she keeps avoiding the blade when Andromache steps forward and presses her lips against her temple, a motion that speaks volumes.

And Andromache leaves in a swish of skirts and without words, and Briseis is once again left to her own pain, unabated.


	6. Xeper

**Xeper  
**_Disclaimer: See previous chapters; I don't like redundancy_

* * *

It is in this very manner that the twelve days of mourning for the death of Troy's defender begin.

The manner is this: Sympathy runs boundless amid the streets of the place, like the plague in Egypt, but sympathy, empathy and all its compatriots are the cords of a very short and taut rope that expects proper recognition once one reaches the end of it. And Briseis is having none of it.

Day 1: Word has traveled all through the narrow yet unfettered alleys of the palace of Troy that Briseis was found by the tent of Achilles, and its inhabitants join together in a collective sigh of pity - and what Briseis briefly ponders to be sympathetic disdain. She was meant for such better things..., they say. Bad things happen to the best of them. They could only imagine. These are the words that run rampant from their steamrolling mouths.

She feels like a weather-beaten rock, shouldering the effects of endless frustration brought about by similar and repeat occurrences. She knows that they know nothing, and finds herself wishing for the company of her lover – and this isn't the first time.

Day 4: The clichés of pity have begun to wear thin, which is a part-relief to Briseis, as there is nothing more detestable than the overwrought use of clichés by misunderstanding, philandering peoples. Seeing Briseis, _captive and weakness of the Greek demi-god,_ has become like an attraction to most decorated courtiers, and times show dangerous prospects of her becoming one of those mythic palace figures that mothers use to blackmail their children about: Now, they don't want to end up like poor Briseis, do they?

She is building layer upon layer of her self-restraint: she now has immeasurable disgust for these self-gratifying people of the court. She yells and rants and raves to Helen – the only woman with a status lower than her own, who only sits with her hands clasped tightly together in a more diluted form of frustration.

Day 7: The end of the sympathy rope is within reach. Expecting compensation for their lavish care and attention, the courtiers begin to grow restless with Briseis' lack of response, and they make sure that their feelings are verbalized when they convene at court, and at dinners. After all, the girl is conscious, her vocal cords aren't damaged, and the least she could do is tell the stories of her time incarcerated in the savage camp, correct? Apparently not: the girl is preferring to waste away her life by looking away and remaining locked in a prison of her own accord and its self-designed invisible walls.

Her stratifying of reactions becomes a melting pot of provocations, and finally she sees fit to leave an evening meal when the comment, Achilles must have been glorious in bed to have provoked such silence from his captive woman. She storms up to her chambers and sits quietly on her bed just to prove she knows better than them. Helen doesn't ask her about any of it, mostly because she knows better.

Day 12: There is a great deal of confusion and unrest in the palace, and it's all because of that priestess Briseis, niece of King Priam. Everyone knows that she's had a terrible time, but would it be so hard for her to just reassure everyone else and take a minute away from herself? Some people are whispering amongst themselves that the girl has gone crazy and is nothing like the girl she used to be: she refuses to drink wine amongst her compatriots, will not tell stories of her captivity, and spends her time solely amongst her cousins.

She is angry at the rampant idiocy of everyone else when everything is so plain to her. She is doubting that all of these people put together into one huge conglomerating, socialist brain have never truly known her, and that the warrior she spent days with knows her better. She hates these people for characterizing her as their very own traitor to flesh carnality just to add colour and texture to their own lithograph lives.

* * *

Far below her in one of the outer city walls, the Greek offering to Poseidon rests in the city courtyard. It is twilight. But this is wrong, because something is different, something has changed. Subtlety crosshatches fine lines over the previously mussed charcoal image. Briseis has a picture in her mind, and at first, she doesn't know what to think of it.

Because of that confusion she remains impassive in every sense as she overturns it in her mind's eye like a child might overturn a grayish, shimmering rock not for the glittering appeal, but for the possibility of finding insects underneath it.

It is an image that she will leave only with herself; unspoken, barely acknowledged, but so very evidently imbued in the very fibers of her clothes and skin and hair, and it makes resonating sounds of echoing, conversing explosions. She knows there will be images to follow.

This is an image she likes - it is the image she's retained from the series of captured movements and tonalities and sounds that was the frequency of the images of her dream last night. She had dreamt -well- and it was a rare thing indeed that Briseis would allow her expressions to relax themselves into prefabricated dreams, while in sleep. She now instead prefers his guard up. But this dream that she relived last night - it might change that.

(The dreams are the beginning and also the end of the two paths convergence in this strange story if one were recounting it backwards. For these purposes instead, it is the beginning of the great divide that at first does not seem so great, and Briseis can feel the rumble of its ascent. For as the reality deteriorates even without recognition of the decomposition -much like the bodies of dead people housed in their coffins- Briseis decides that she will use the dreams -and she's going to make sure that there are more- to make what should be. What she knows will come true.)

She had dreamt of one of the many times she had lain in his arms, softly talking:

He lies on his back, and she is cradled loosely in the crook of his arm, while the other comes up to stroke the column of her neck. The blankets are gathered around their waists, because the sweat on their skin has not yet cooled. His eyes follow the path of his fingers, softly touching the tendons in her neck and just as softly asking, "Would you leave Troy?"

The skin stretched over her jaw tightens when she bites the inside of her mouth, her gaze firmly fixed on the apple in his throat, for fear of catching the intensity of his eyes. "Never. Every Trojan is a part of Troy. So long as it stands, I could never leave it." She glances up only for a second, then back down.

There is a pause, then: "And when Troy falls? What then?"

Briseis takes a slow, hitching breath, but when she speaks, her voice is steady. "Troy will never fall. Its walls have not been breached." Her jaw is set firmly, and he smiles at that.

"It can and it will. It may never have been breached, but it has also never seen the likes of this army, or the likes of Achilles." His hand travels down, from her neck over her arms, down to lightly dust over her hip, sharply protruding, and her breath catches.

She whispers lightly, "You think so highly of yourself."

The corner of his mouth gives a tick, showing his amusement. "It is not thinking. The man who thinks highly of himself is a fool. A man who knows himself for what he is; that is fact." His eyes are bright, and certain. Achilles leans in, over her head, and lays a kiss on the hollow in her throat, then another on her collarbone, his hand still lightly dusting at her hip. He moves to kiss her lips, but then she says:

"Troy will not fall."

Laying a finger over her lips, he answers, "But if it did, what then? If every Trojan is a part of Troy, then could you not take it with you wherever you go?" There is a watchfulness in his eyes that makes her feel like prey.

It gives her a start, and she raises and cocks her head in contemplation over him. "What is this that you are saying, Achilles?"

He lies back and his hold on her loosens, and his eyes stray to the ceiling of the tent. "I suppose you will soon know, because Troy _will_ fall."

She thinks on this, and lays back into the curve of his shoulder, her head on his chest. Briseis holds her breath, and then asks almost without thought, "Where would I go, Achilles?"

He smiles again, then gives a short bark of a laugh. Achilles glances down at her, at her despondent face, "Oh, the things I will show you…"

* * *

Running. She is running – and this is not a dream.

She is not quite sure of what actually happened; at one moment Troy was blanketed in a twilit tapestry of celebration of victory, and in another the Greeks were in every corner of every room, yelling and breaking and killing and stealing. As Briseis runs, she doesn't bother to ponder _how_, as opposed to _how might she survive_. She knows she cannot survive on her immaterial hopes of Achilles and heroism, because Achilles has assured her time and time again that if anything, he is not a hero and does not wish to be. Heroes willingly sacrifice their own loves and happiness in face of other people, and Achilles would not – he only wants the glory of bloodshed. And so she is on her own.

She stumbles, as if blind, through the hallways and through the sea of courtiers squirming like insects to get past one another. Her aimless running is both futile and dangerous: she finds not a trace of the royal family – not Paris or Helen or Andromache or Astyanax or Priam or Hecuba – and she knows that the time between now and when the fortified palace is completely overrun by the Greeks is short.

In this moment desperation fills her, for there is nobody for her to follow and only her own wits to carry her, and Briseis must appeal to herself to find a way out of this labyrinth of chaos. But, like a child, she recoils from the danger of self-expectation and runs to her protector, and that which she has been faithful to her whole life: the sun god Apollo.

_This is not a smart move_, she thinks. The grand shrine to Apollo within the palace is naturally situated at its center, so as to encompass everything, and it is filled with riches and perfumes and exotic cloths to draw the plunders like a bee to the flower. The shrine to Apollo is a symbol of Trojan power, and of the gods' favour upon her people, and would be the initial target once the invaders get inside the palace. But these are not the rational thoughts that Briseis thinks as she runs t the altar. Her hurry and faith is so powerful, drawn taut like a web to draw around her body, that she does not see her uncle, her king, Priam, fall under the hands of Agamemnon, because in that moment she is kneeling; in that moment, she sends up her high and shameless hopes for safety and security – and for it to come from within the breast of the Greek army - from Achilles.

But it is not his hands – calloused and finely-boned, like an artist's hands, only stronger and artful only over a sword, a spear and her skin – that grasp her from behind, and it is not his scent – sweat from battle, and wine from the stores, and salt from the sea - that surrounds her, and it is not his voice – caught in its perpetual smirk and with an upbeat of indestructible arrogance and power - that patronizes her sharply: it is Agamemnon's.

But this is all right, and this is why: because it is Agamemnon, and not Achilles, that grasps her so hatefully by the neck and by the hair, _her_ hands and _her_ dagger have no scruples at finding a sheath within the king of kings' neck where she had been so stricken by hesitation over the neck of Achilles.

He falls, and his peons grasp her, and their swords are unsheathed, and then _he_ arrives – the light of his sheer dazzling power filling the altar as he cuts them down without a thought.

There, with him, and in his arms, Briseis thinks her faith has finally been rewarded – never has she so desperately asked anything of the gods and been awarded her due. She feels something akin to elation and –could it be?- hope swell within her at the touch of the iron under the skin of his arms.

But then Paris, and his arrows, begin to fly.


	7. Mistress

**Mistress**  
_Disclaimer: See previous chapters; I don't like being redundant.

* * *

_

He watches as she runs from him, her feet catching on the stone steps and her hand caught in her cousin's unrelenting grasp. He watches until she is gone from sight and he is certain that he will never see her again; there is no need for composure, save for an honourable death and funeral rites, and those are out of his hands. Achilles keels slowly over to his side.

It is as if he can feel the very Fates, sisters who spin, measure and cut the threads of mortal life, holding the spool of his own life in their knobbled hands and considering, laughing, questioning.

And so he waits to die. _What now?_ He thinks. There he lies, the great and invincible Achilles of Greece, waiting for his death to claim him after seeking out his mistress one last time in a faraway land. It is the fodder made for myths and legends, he thinks distractedly, and recognizes his immortality as it stares him in the eye alongside his mortality. _The gods work in strange ways,_ he thinks.

A shout.

From behind him, hordes of Greek soldiers spill and froth like teeming waves upon the stairs as they come upon their hero. Odysseus or Ithaca is with them, and he comes to Achilles' side almost immediately. He is not, unlike many romantic poets would have you believe, taken aback and beset by tears and sobs; this is a war, and far too many men of better character than Achilles have fallen within his view. Instead, he sets to work: "Alive?" The attending soldier motions positively, and the fallen warrior's eyes follow up to the face of the respected king.

His eyes merry and confident despite the carnage, Odysseus leans toward him and whispers, "do not despair over your mortality just yet, dear friend. The gods of war favour us, and they will watch over you."

* * *

She supposes that he is dead by now. It has been days since fleeing from Troy.

It is early in the morning, the sky still darkened, and Briseis feels like a dark and solitary mistress of an actual domain, rather than simply the carved territory of her own flesh. It is a heady and powerful wine that makes her smile, despite the true nature of her entire situation, and she allows herself a few moments of passing drunkenness over these nightly moments of freedom.

Despite what her displaced fellows, Aeneas, Paris and Helen might think after the days of her silence sheathed in quietism, Briseis is not ashamed of herself. She actually thinks very little of herself. At some points, she even prefers the limber feel of this no-longer-untouched body of hers - it means experience, and it's time people stopped thinking of her as an unmarred little girl with a tabula rasa.

She supposes that her recent vow f silence was a mere extension of her complete disgruntlement with people in their entirety. She doesn't remember planning it like a strategist, but as a momentary surge of adrenaline and knowledge through well-worn veins the first time she saw another person, after...

It wasn't that complicated, she might say, should she ever decide to volunteer an explanation. Within a single flash, she had experienced this epiphany that had foretold all she needed to know: the questions, the requirements, the guilt, the explanations - all required of her because of her ties to her people.

Forget that, she had thought - no communication means no explanations. And that, literally, was that. And so, Briseis decided to stop talking for the time being and remain mute, so as not to be harassed by the people around her.

These past events have inspired other changes in her, she knows. As Briseis steps softly away from their nightly camp en route to wherever Aeneas takes their group of Trojan refugees, she knows that she feels very little natural fear. She is dressed in a lightly, and despite the innocent setting of the lands past Mount Ida, she feels no worry whatsoever about what might befall her - a young victim walking the lands at night in flimsy clothing. She has experienced enough.

There is a very light wind lazily being carried through the otherwise stagnant air, and it tugs a few flyaway pieces of her hair out of its sloppy tie. Briseis frowns -a quick transformation of ice-ridden flesh of the face- and tucks her hair behind her ears nervously. The strands are too long now, but she's afraid to cut them - doesn't like the look of blades just yet.

She glances back at the shadowed, broken planes of her fellow Trojans, all of them sleeping at the moment, and regards them in quiet appraisal. The chaotic interplay of personalities and emotions flung there together over the past little while since fleeing Troy has turned to negative shades of black and white and gray. Like the grey of rain. She doesn't like rain, because it reminds her of the nature of her dreams. But those shades will have transformed eventually - turned into muted sepia tones.

Minutes pass, and she is walking directly and efficiently on a path marked only in her mind.

Every night it is like this. She spends the day making her convoluted plans along with every possible contingency, using it as fodder to keep her sanity straight. Her lack of speech has made Briseis turn inwards, to herself, for distraction. And so the night falls, and all her countrymen go to sleep, and she steals away from camp with the intent of running away and never returning. What ties her to Troy now? Not her family, for all who survive are Paris and Helen, who are little to speak of. Andromache she loves, and would take with her, but Andromache is immersed in her own pain, and Briseis cannot be selfish enough to share her own with her.

And so, each night, the newly "mute girl" leaves camp with all intentions of abandon.

Briseis stops.

Each night, the newly "mute girl" leaves camp with all intentions of abandon. And each night, she stops and turns back.

Because what is out there for her? Her lover is dead, her family is dead, her faith is dead. Why not cling to her nationality? Why not? Even if she does not believe in Aeneas, what difference could it possibly make?

Briseis returns to camp, and sits on her pallet. Andromache stirs, raises her head and looks at her cousin. "Hello Briseis."

The girl who has decided to say nothing, says nothing. It is as if her vow of silence after Troy is a new faith for her, a new sense of virginity to offer to the gods.

There is wisdom in Andromache's eyes as she lays back down, and Briseis momentarily feels like a fool, like a petulant child, for saying nothing to her dear cousin.

Time passes in this manner.


	8. Luck

**Luck**  
_Disclaimer: See previous chapters; I don't like being redundant.  
__Note: To the reviewer who asked what "Xeper" meant; it is the title of a song by Vader that I was listening to while writing chapter 6. It's a word of Egyptian origin, meaning "becoming", or philosophically, "I have come into being, and by the process of my coming into being, the process of coming into being is established."

* * *

_

The morning is young upon the hard-packed earth, and for the seventh time since their party left Troy, Paris approaches the edge of camp with the smoothly disjointed saunter of a panther.

It bothers him that his once-opulent life of the past has disintegrated into the framework and confines of mere routines, of being "on the run" - the current one being his present actions. Routines are a practice that he had always sworn to avoid, and it is an oath that Paris breaks time and time again, each time to a more painful form of heartbreak. Or lifebreak. You see, Paris likes to be impulsive, to be unpredictable. It was his unstated role as the younger prince of Troy. But now, he is the only prince of Troy, a Tory which has fallen into Greek hands, and he along with Aeneas must care for the survivors.

His bare feet fall rhythmically on the ground and he can see the curving slope of her shoulders, and the low plains of her legs tucked to the side. When he approaches, the effect of the faint light at night will pin a refracted and soft glow to the lines carving the exposed skin stretched over her neck and collarbone. Underneath that skin, Paris knows there are scars. She is reading, but Paris knows exactly how to read her movements (or lack thereof) - and he knows that she knows he's here.

Pairs doesn't like that he doesn't understand what has happened to dear Briseis. His once sprightly and joyful cousin, whose age was so close to his own, mirrored his own passion for life, for emotion, for love. She has become a mute woman, all harsh angles and firm planes of skin, fully exposed to the hardships and tragedies of war. That she refuses to speak, _to anyone_, frightens him, because he does not know what she could be thinking. And thinking too much, even Paris knows, is a dangerous thing.

This nightly routine is supposedly under her control: Paris refuses to lie to himself and say that there's a chance he might not come to sit with her on another night - because he will. The game is completely different for Briseis: she doesn't suffer the skewed crises of conscience that he is. He feels bound to her, but she is not bound to him.

The routine is this: she leaves the camp each night, for a reason that is lost within her self-taken oath of silence, and a while later he follows, and finds her sitting on the outskirts of camp reading or drawing or just watching. He joins her, sometimes he brings his own single piece of literature that he had brought back from Mycenae, and together they sit. She, of course, says nothing.

He sits as he does every time -cross-legged and slouched- and places his leather-bound book carefully on a patch of wild grass as he methodically lights a new fire for the two of them. Briseis likes to watch him do it: the smooth movements of flicking his small branch of fire from the main one back at camp on a collection of sticks and grass, the out-of-place steady flame and its sudden flare, the smoldering ashes and that strange familiar smell are all entrancing and powerfully intoxicating to her. Watching it makes her feel like she's innocent and naive and an idiot back at the temple again. But then, not really. But she returns to the ink words on the page as soon as he's done, and before he has the chance to catch and gauge the intensity of her stare.

Before he picks up his own book, Paris takes a few moments to stare openly at her - not like one might at a zoo, but like one might regard something blatantly familiar with a new, tiny fault. He tries to summon up a moving image of Briseis with her Greek lover Achilles, all golden skin and molten hair and Poseidon eyes, but the fusion and mixture of Technicolor and reality doesn't work out pleasantly.

Briseis looks up and now they stare at each other. Her eyes, his eyes; white shift, blue robe; exposed scar, hidden scar.

A few seconds pass, and Paris moves to pick up his book. The he speaks.

"Aeneas says we have gone off course."

She does not even glance at him; she is utterly not concerned with the plight of the Trojans any longer. Originally, Aeneas had thought to lead them to found a new Troy in a war-torn, savage land on the other side of Greece, far away from Thrace and the Asia Minor. It had been many, many, many days since they had left Troy, but the days weaved together in her mind, as did the carts the rode, the ships, the marches. These concerns were for Paris and for Aeneas and for Helen. She was unconcerned.

He kept talking. "But instead, Aeneas says that he had a vision of Athena commanding him to go to Carthage. You know of it?" Briseis shrugs. "_I_ think it suspicious, that Athena would help us when she favoured the Greeks at Troy. I think it's a trap." His eyes glitter at the possibility. Paris mutters then, more to himself, "I think we have had enough of traps."

She continues reading.

"Even so, we will reach the realm of Carthage in the net few days. With luck, we will not all be slaughtered."

Nothing.

"Helen has a theory that you have taken a vow of silence to appease Apollo for giving up your virtue to A Greek."

She looks up sharply, with greek fire flaming in her eyes. For a moment, it is almost like the old days, when Paris would tease her about her virginity and her virtue as a maiden of Apollo, of the world she was missing, within the walls of their home. But it is not like before, and Briseis stands, and leaves him alone to his fire, weaving her way back to camp.

Paris sighs.

* * *

Now, when they reach Carthage, another one of those curious things happen.

Their group of survivors trudges towards the garrisons, towards the battalions of soldiers, so similar to the forces their own land had once held under the vigil of Hector. The Carthaginians take sight of them; from their faraway mounts they point and gesture to their dusty little group of unmarked Trojans, all of them without hope or weapons. Briseis is among them, walking hand-in-hand (for strength) with Andromache, just in front beside Paris and Helen and Aeneas and his brood.

As the soldiers of Carthage ride towards them, Briseis begins imagining different scenarios of reception. Either they would all be killed on the spot for entry into foreign lands without permission, or treated like prisoners with little respect. Given her limited knowledge of Carthage traditions, she finds the former far more likely. She has heard that in Carthage, they sacrifice masses of infants to appease their pagan gods. She frowns, but Andromache only smiles weakly and serenely to her in support.

Aeneas hails to the advancing guard in greeting, and then chaos breaks upon them like the foam of the waves from the sea.

Andromache, being the most sensible of the entire group and subconsciously trained by watching her late husband in battle, is the first to see the head of the guard draw a long spear from his weapons. She freezes and lets Briseis' hand free in panic, her voice brokenly raised in panic. Aeneas sees the threat next and stops very suddenly, halting the group along with him.

Briseis, lost amid herself, walks forward regardless.

She does not, or cares not, hear the warning shouted to her by her countrymen, and the spear flies toward her, made the target by her advance.

Now here is the curious thing:

As the spear hurtles towards her, Briseis momentarily says what she believes to be her final prayer to Apollo, hoping to be sent to the same place in Hades as her lover. But when the spear nears her, a swallow flies across her line of vision, and the spear strikes the bird dead to the heart.

Bird and spear fall to the ground at her feet.

Silence.

The guards stop very suddenly in their own advance, and it seems as though they are a chessmatch at a stalemate, with Briseis caught as the bargaining tool. The Carthaginians confer amongst themselves, and the man who threw the spear finally comes forward. The hooves of his horse leave marks in the sand. As he approaches, the Trojans shout warnings to her, but Briseis is past caring. The sign of the swallow has made her wonder if she is back in the favour of the gods, for surely it could be nothing but a sign from Olympus.

The Carthaginian halts his horse before her and dismounts, removing his helmet and revealing darkly tanned skin and brown eyes like her own. He studies her as he walks to her, studying her features and the aura that may or may not surround her. But when he is before her, the soldier who towers above her drops into a bow and takes her hand softly. He speaks in a low and thickly accented voice, in almost archaic Greek.

"My patron Lady of Luck and Fortune, I welcome you to Carthage."


	9. Stories

**Stories**  
_Disclaimer: See previous chapters; I don't like being redundant.

* * *

_

Odysseus tells a true story.

Before he took the crown of Ithaca, he had a friend named Leonidas. He was a newly married man, of old nobility, well-liked by men and women alike, and well sought after before his marriage. But Leonidas loved his young wife dearly, and would have no other woman before her. And so they were married.

Agamemnon, young and brash like a bull amid vases at the head of Mycenae, challenges the tiny nation of Ithaca to war and Leonidas, like Odysseus and other men, goes to war. It is not a long war in most senses, but all wars are wearing on the senses, particularly when they are fought away from home. At night, Leonidas goes to sleep in his tent shared with Odysseus dreaming of his young wife, dreaming of her flesh and her scent and the lilt in her voice. He keeps his thoughts to himself, but Odysseus could read the emotions off his face and knew that the man wanted the war to be done, won or lost, whatever the cost of Ithaca, if only he could see his wife again. But when the young king-to-be approaches his friend about it, about how Leonidas would abandon his country to see his wife sooner, the noble is incensed, furious, does not mince words, and Odysseus, in a rage, orders the man onto a ship headed back to Ithaca because he cannot stand his company.

Now this perhaps was not the initial plan of Leonidas, but seeing that insulting his friend managed to send him home, he is thankful for the turn of events. But this is not a smart turn of thoughts, and Athena curses his lack of integrity.

Poseidon follows, and Leonidas finds his ship assailed with gales and storms and calm days with no wind, and the waves wash over the wooden planks, finally tossing him to the sea to teach the man about integrity. A nymph finds him and bears him away to an island unplotted, and there she spins her seduction for two long years at his resistance. At night, he dreams of his wife again, bearing his sanity based solely on thoughts of her, making silken promises in his mind to her of his fidelity and of his faithful return. The day comes when the nymph finally allows him passage and smooth sailing back to Ithaca, and his heart is lifted at te sudden favour from the gods.

What happens?

He steps across the blue tiles on the threshold of his home, and Leonidas finds his wife keeping house with another man. He curses the gods, and they curse him back – he kills his traitorous wife and her lover, then finds himself mad. He wanders the streets and alleys of Ithaca, the soles of his unshod feet stinging, until a thief crosses his path and kills him for not giving up his coin. It is a pathetic, dishonourable end.

* * *

That is the true story that Odysseus tells Achilles as they bear him onto the Ithacan flagship. He tells the story as they lay him down on a makeshift pallet in the hold of the ship, as the sail is raised and as the first oars touch the waves. He tells the story to Achilles as they leave Troy to its captors.

It is a true story.

What makes it true is its reality. It is a story that strikes Achilles, within his mild fevered delirium, as appropriate. It is true because justice has no part in it, because life is not just. It is true because it is the kind of story that makes you sick of life, because that is how life can make you feel. It churns his stomach, has no virtue, morals play no part in it, he cannot apply it to his own life. It is an entity on its own, like an individual. It is true because it is not told by wise men, who are traitorous – Odysseus arms himself with trickery, with shrewd intelligence, and he makes arms of his sins and uses them against others. He tells the story with a twinkle in his eye, because he finds it humorous, and in that he is so slightly sadistic. All of this, and much more, makes it true. Only a trickster could properly tell a true story of a noble who met a pathetic, dishonourable end.

* * *

The men bow to him, Achilles notices, whenever they step down into the hold of the ship. It gives him little pleasure.

He doesn't like it – his state, his current position, his weakness. He lies prostrate, his head turned to the side and his skin covered in a heavy sheen of sweat, glittering for the first time without the blood of the enemy to accompany it. His hair is lank, his eyes dull, and his armour lies in a distinctly not illustrious heap on the floor beside him. He is active – Achilles has been tended to as the days wear by on sea – but he does not wish to step outside yet. For now, he is alone with his thoughts, save for those few times when the men come down and bow to him.

A Greek ship is purely utilitarian. It has two levels – all it needs – and no luxuries of rooms or washbasins. For the most part, the men who man the oars sleep on deck and under the stars, sometimes on the benches they row all day upon. The kings and captains and warlords sleep beside them. Below is the hold, a place for the weapons and for cargo, rarely used as habitation.

So to Achilles, the fact that the men bow to him without prompting speaks worlds to him – men are independent creatures who can be told to think nothing if they do not think it by themselves. That they bow speaks of respect and of admiration; it speaks that he will become the demi-god creature once more.

In moments between moments, he thinks idly of Briseis. He will not see her again, he is certain, and so he is left possession of the memories of their times together, he is given possession of their stories. He thinks of how he might speak of her to friends home in Phtia, of how he might weave a complex story of humanizing the warrior in the most unlikely of places: in war. But how could he phrase the sharp curve her shoulders and hips made beneath the sheet of his bed, or the rivulet of blood the ran from her split lip, or the beauty he had found in a girl ravaged by the lifestyle he called his own?

_Impossible_.

He remembers a true story.

* * *

"Oh, the things I will show you…"

He laughs after he says this, but her face is smooth and unlined save for a single crease of confusion down her forehead. She shifts closer to him after he says it, laying her head on his outstretched arm and her finger brushing his strong jaw. "What things, Achilles?"

With eyes bright and alert he is like a predator circling her, and she wonders what web he is spinning around her, for her, now. Their gazes meet and his own hand reaches up to take hers, dusting around his exposed cheekbone. "Things you never had, and never will have, if you stay in Troy."

She pauses at this, and considers what he says seriously, just as she does to everything she says. Briseis has learned that despite his passion for killing, this man is no fool. But she challenges him, thinking of her lavish and generous childhood: "They gave me everything in Troy."

The corner of his mouth quirks up in a smirk, and he releases her hand to touch her neck with the calloused pads of his fingers. "No. Not everything." Those sharp eyes bore into her.

Briseis lifts her head up slightly and juts her chin, saying, "Then what?" He catches her chin between his fingers and kisses her. It is slow, but never light, though so unlike him, since he in raw passion is like an unleashed storm that will never abate. He releases her.

"Power."

She averts her eyes. Power, she has been taught, is almost a shameful thing. The soldiers of Troy fight not because they enjoy it, but because they must sacrifice themselves in order to defend their country. Power, she has learned, is a thing of the gods, not meant for mere mortals like them. But she is not surprised that Achilles speaks so freely and strongly of it, especially given what they say about him, and about his mother. _Gods_. Her own curiosity astounds her. "What is it like, to be powerful?"

Amazingly, he considers the question seriously. "What kind of power? There are many kinds."

Her answer is quick. "Your kind. To be like you. What is it like?"

Achilles closes up; something she should have expected. This is what he does whenever the bold dare to ask him the truth about his mother, Thetis, or about his own supposed invulnerability. He says vaguely, but with conviction, "I couldn't tell you, because I have never known what it is like to be weak. I am what I am."

Finally, she decides, "I had power in Troy."

"No, you didn't." A pause, and then he states quickly, assuredly, "A daughter of the royal family is worth one thing, and that is her virtue for a powerful marriage. And if she does not take that path, only some of her worth could be retrieved through piety and devotion to the gods."

He is watching her reaction carefully; something sparks in her eyes. Many have told her, back in Troy, that serving Apollo was not her full potential, that she should have found a husband to bind to her homeland. It strikes a chord in her, churning up old memories. "You insult me?"

"No. What I mean to say is that with me, you have the greatest power to ever be wielded over your entire life."

She shifts back, raising herself up on an elbow to regard him in his entirety, as if appraising him for his total worth. Achilles is at first amused, and then distracted by the curve of her exposed breast. She eventually states, almost in accusation, "To love a killer is to have power?"

"To be loved, to be _treasured_, by _Achilles_ is to have power." He corrects. His eyes glitter, partly with a desire that she recognizes and now welcomes, and partly with an almost reverent fondness that she does not recognize. His hand cups her jaw, and he adds, "You have more power than any soldier in this camp."

She considers this. The fact that is might be true is terrifying; she remembers the unspoken respect allotted to her as Achilles' lover, after he went out of his so normally arrogant and selfish way to make her his own. She recognizes silently that here, in his arms, she has found the most freedom she has ever known, beyond the confines of propriety and etiquette and protocol and virtue. With him, and with his security, she has found some kind of paradise.

Briseis lays a hand on his chest and leans over him, her dark hair fallen over her shoulder and forming a curtain over both their faces. She asks softly, "And then what am I to do with this…power?"

His hand laces into her hair and over her scalp, bringing her down to meet his lips. "Leave the weak behind," he murmurs, running the hand down her neck and over her side. He curves his arm around her waist and flips her onto her back, catching her in a harsh and unrelenting kiss, unleashing the storm once again.

* * *

In true stories, there is rarely a point. In the case of Odysseus' friend, he tells Achilles, sitting with him below deck while eating fruit, nothing was accomplished save for infidelity, a waste of emotions, the god's ire and a thief's quick anger. In the case of Achilles in Troy, he found peace in a woman like none he had ever met but lost her, and knows full well that he will soon become the seamless man he was before her. A killing machine. Nothing was accomplished. These are the true stories that make up their lives, that make up the lives of their fellows. They live and breathe and sleep without a point; the war is over and there's still no point; and when they're home and retelling the less personal true stories to their loved ones, a point might occur to them in mid-telling, but it is lost by the time they have reached the end. At home, when the war is done, in the interim period between the next ones, they sit and wonder, What was the point? 


	10. Gossip

**Gossip**  
_Disclaimer: See previous chapters.

* * *

_

Carthage is a foreign place, a strange place, and it is full of strange stories. Like the people of Carthage, its stories are best because they do not separate mind from myth. Parts of the stories from that strange, strange place are as real as the lines in your fist, and other parts are unbelievable. Mundane parts and mad parts, mixed together into a purely Carthaginian story.

Briseis and Aeneas and the Trojans are fast becoming the fodder of another story. The men of Carthage pass the story between each other when they are gathered together the night before the sacrifices. There are always a few men who are upset and unravelled, like a tapestry come apart, because their infants are unwillingly going to be sacrificed at the altar the net day. So the other men, understanding but not willing to intervene, tell colourful stories to distract them.

Hermes, a man who shacked the Trojan party because he unwittingly bore the name of one of their gods, is a man who works amid the prestigious Carthaginian generals. He is the one who starts the story of the Trojans, because their party keeps together and to themselves in Carthage; a well-advised move. But because the generals know of the Trojans in their city, Hermes knows as well, and he swears to his friends that it is the honest truth.

Even so, others don't always believe him. "Why would the Trojans have come so far?" they say, or, "The soldiers would've killed them on the spot, anyway." But Hermes insists, "I've _seen_ them. I swear it." And at this insistence, they let him tell his story.

* * *

Not too long ago, he had been busy delivering maps to the higher ranked officials when the small and battered group had entered. They were near-surrounded by soldiers, but the lot seemed far too exhausted and dusty to put up any complaint. It was a party comprised mostly of women and infants, and perhaps a few young men. At the head of the group was a brash and confident young man with a sword, but the soldiers were evidently ignoring him in lieu of a slip of a woman with long, curly brown hair. The soldiers walked forward and presented her to one of the generals, to whom she inclined her head but did not speak.

"See," he shifts in his seat as he recalls to his friends, "the Trojans had just lost this grand war back home, and they were the survivors. Not much to them, 'cept for the youngest Trojan prince, the widow and son of the eldest prince, Hector, and a cousin to the princes, the woman Briseis."

"The brown-haired one?" Somebody asked, and he inclined his head.

"Yes, that's the one. And this other kid, _Aeneas_, who fancies himself leader of the whole group. But it's the _girl_ that everyone cares about up amongst the generals. See, our soldiers did attack their party when they approached the border, but when they threw a spear at this woman, a bird flew from _nowhere_ and took the hit."

Their was a hush among their gathering.

Hermes continues, "They fancy it a sign from the gods, thinking of her as a patroness of luck." He sits forward. "So the generals think, so long as they keep the Trojans in Carthage, the woman's luck will fall in our favour – and so it has. We have won all our battles downstream against the rebels since their arrival."

"But will the Trojans stay?"

He stokes his beard in thought, but answers frankly. "I don't think they want to; what place do they have in Carthage? But the soldiers are doing all they can to keep them here, including setting Princess Dido the task of seducing Aeneas, the fool. She says she loves him now." He laughs. "Silly princesses with their silly dreams about silly men."

More laughter.

* * *

Her eyes are tracing the outline of his face again. She finds him fascinating. His own eyes are cast downwards, not in a shame, but in languorous concentration upon the elegance of the tidy weapons before him. A miracle of metamorphosis, of transformation, as the memories he associates with them deconstruct and synthesize themselves from visual to audio, visual to audio; astute observations on the nature of human life, and of human nature. He is lightly explaining them to her. And she watches.

If Achilles could affix a sensation to that regard which she so lavishly slathers on him as the moments drip past with the viscosity of liquefying sugar or better yet, warm candle wax, he would say that it tickles. Her glance is feathered, traveling smoothly and boldly over the hollows and slopes that make the planes of his face, a rigid landscape of hard stares and ashen skin and golden hair. A feeling familiar like a sword.

"Are you even listening?" He demands.

He doesn't look up at her - Achilles generally doesn't when he is lost in thought. Swordplay is so alluring and attractive to him, like sex to frustrated young boys, and he cannot nor does he want to detach his full attention from the weapons before him, even for the sake of this woman. But he can feel Briseis' curiosity.

Now he looks up at her from under the unruly strands of his matted hair, and motions carelessly and casually with his hand, loose fingers and looser goblet hanging from them.

"Not that I don't appreciate you continued vigil of me," he says, "but..." Achilles is conscious of her gaze following his every movement with a certain detached interest as he tosses the empty cup into the dark area of her room in Carthage. He wants to arouse that thing in her, whatever it is in whatever manifestation, curled up tightly like a fetus underneath the sheath of her new skin. ...whatever it was that led her to yield to him so many times on the beaches of Troy. He wants to wake her blood, make her less detached and yearn for him. "I know that I can be a great distraction." He allows generously. Achilles grins, Cheshire cat.

Her eyes change from their previous fleeting thoughts to a carousel of annoyances, a vigorously sloshing cup of visual retorts hammering on the sides of carefully leashed control. Achilles can hear her voice her thoughts in his own head, though, something along the lines of: _"Or perhaps it's just your unacknowledged narcissism kicking in. Stay away from mirrored pools."_ He hears it in his head because she won't voice it herself.

He smirks because he knows she won't object, since she is continuing her oath of silence, and he talks on other subjects all the while.

Achilles tells her that he's sure she knows that Paris has become some sort of an empathetic martyr victimized by another martyr, with less intelligent language. Paris is going around saying that he forgives her for her mistakes with the Greek warrior, for her betrayal, there are worse things… after all, he _did_ take his vengeance by killing the man.

Her eyes dance at this as he continues.

He tells Briseis that he heard about her marvelous feat at the confrontation with the Carthaginians. Achilles pauses and takes a long look at his laid out weapons on display for her, and then looks away thoughtfully. What he would have given to see her defy Trojans and Carthaginians alike, he tells her wistfully.

When he looks up at her, Briseis finds her features momentarily frozen by strange means as she finds wrapped amid the cold iron of his eyes a warm core of obvious affection. She doesn't check herself as she reaches out and runs her hand first over the vertex of his cheekbone, flanking the planes softly and feeling the texture of the ongoing interplay of muscles beneath her fingertips. He leans into the curve of her palm, and she reaches it up again to brush her fingers through his hair, and back down again. Achilles lightly kisses her palm, then nips the end of a finger, and this is when she wakes up.

* * *

Briseis sits, alone is her allotted chamber in Carthage, staring at the space where she had seen her once and only lover. She draws her hand back and looks away, picture of a doe conscious of being in the sights of several poachers. She looks back at the space, and there is something new, snake-like, and very determined in her eyes.

She turns around, and finishes reading one of the few books in Greek she had found in the Carthage library ("Warrior Codes" – perhaps _this_ was where she had drawn her hallucination of Achilles explaining weaponry to her?) on her own, and in silence. If he had been where she had imagined him, the decrepit curves of her back would be taunting to him – Achilles might have imagined reaching out and placing his palm flat over her vertebras and under the thin layer of her robes, dragging his hand, fingers splayed, down the length of her back- but he is not. And so, Briseis reads under the oppressive blanket of quiet.

For a moment, she wishes she was back and submerged in the ongoing underwater world of noise that was war. She wants to have voices wash over her like water, conversations drifting in and out of her attention at her discretion and at his volition. But Briseis does nothing. She lives now is a world of displacement, a nomad lifestyle, and her own not-very-thought-out oath of silence.

She worries like a frail and wrinkled blonde might fret after a criminal husband, worrying about her sanity and worrying about her place and worrying because she doesn't trust the Carthaginians, stilling her quirking hands at every potential moment during the following day. Her worry is merited. Even so, the next night, the vision of Achilles doesn't come back.


	11. Conscription

**Conscription**  
_Disclaimer: See previous chapters; I don't like being redundant.

* * *

_

On a bright and cheerful afternoon (and not on a dark and rainy night), Briseis is unwillingly raised out of a reverie. Without thinking, she has watched her fellows prepare and pack amid Carthage, and she hasn't taken any note of it. When Paris comes to her on that cheerful morning in the library, she wonders to herself why she hasn't paid him much attention. She wonders about the meaning behind it while he leads her out, beyond the guard towers and stationed soldiers, to the plain of windswept sand.

There had been much talk amongst her people of departure, but Briseis has purposefully kept to herself. Her mind has laced doubt upon its threads like a slow-acting poison, and now in a nation of sand and blood and iron and ritual, she wonders about the trustworthiness of their leader Aeneas. Aeneas, who has barely spoken to their small party, so enraptured with the embrace of the Carthaginian princess Dido was he. She imagines the hard months of toil surely ahead of them while their leader will lead them periodically astray on a mythical quest for a new homeland that only Aeneas can find. There is no altering this predescribed fate, she thinks to herself; she has no choice in whether or not she must continue with her fellow Trojans. They unwittingly have her bound in a surreal landscape of tied knots and a labyrinth of intertwining strings, unless the boorish people of Carthage have anything to say about it.

Sometimes, she catches the generals watching her when he back is almost turned. At first, she feared violence, but no malice lay in the orbs of their eyes. Then she feared violation, but they did not leer at her as the men in rags on the streets so often did towards herself and Andromache. Their intentions towards her, even now, remain unknown, and so there is nobody and nothing else to help her decide her own fate.

On this day, Paris seeks to find his cousin because they must talk of the future. His temporary isolation in the brassy box of his mind gives Paris enough time to clearly sort his thoughts, sifting them like fine flour through the hairline cracks in his fingers and discovering the very essence his situation requires. He has been charged with the rather volatile quest of informing Briseis of the Trojans' imminent departure from Troy, at Aeneas' behest. A brief appeal to the very nature of his cousin, ingrained in short penstrokes over the expanse of her soul, instructs him on where to go to find her.

Within ten minutes he has finished golddigging through all spiderhole libraries within the palace. On the eleventh minute, he finds her.

She is perfectly fine, sitting and reading in the library: through the heavy wooden open door of the sanctuary he snipes her position, this pinnacle of solitude behind a cold stone table. He walks in and disturbs the silence of the books and strides over, sits across from her. As he does, Paris passes behind her and leans down; he drops a light kiss of greeting in the dark of her hair – and then it's gone.

Briseis is perusing the pages of her book – non-mythical philosophy – but she accords him a good draught of dignity as he sits in closing it quietly and putting her hands in her lap innocently. Her eyes meet his briefly, a yin-and-yang of clay against water, but his gaze falls upon her books: a slim tome of philosophy beside another about war, and he remarks to himself on her new sheer disregard for reading on the gods.

In his mind's eye, Paris sees metaphorical fingers flipping past the unmarked gallery of his memories' images, flashes of sturdy, unmoving colour tones streaming before him. He stops on one – a seemingly irrelevant one of Andromache telling him that their cousin refuses to talk of the gods anymore.

Now, this strikes Paris, and he finds it immeasurably tragic. Religion is full of devoted symbolism in the parallel universe of Briseis' life, he knows. It is because of this tragic quality to the lack of piety that makes him not comment upon it. He believes she has lost herself.

Instead, he intones solemnly, "I must speak with you."

The dancing in her eyes gives away her internal laughter, a struggle of mirth caused by depressive subjects. Paris tells the attendant not far from the table that she need not accompany Briseis any longer; Paris will escort her. This is the same attendant who, after a few minutes of oblique, stranger-like observation, decides through narrow-slatted eyes that they are a duo who have weathered the storm. She watches their reactions to each other and believes that they are great friends, and will be until death.

But are they?

* * *

On this plain of sand to which Paris brings her, Briseis regards him critically. There is a desperation in his eyes that she has seen few times before.

On this plain of sand, the quietism that surrounds her haunts Paris, and he waits for tumbleweed to cross the sheer expanse and be crushed under the heels of his sandals, but he is disappointed. He has brought the silent woman here with absolutely no logic in mind but to follow Aeneas' directions to inform her of their imminent departure, and to check on Briseis' well-being – and so a remarkable one-sided conversation ensues.

Conversing with Briseis now has to be the strangest thing he's ever done in his life, Paris decrees to himself as he forms his sentences. He looks at her both reprovingly and reproachfully, as if chastising her for not solving and being rid of this puzzle sooner, for not becoming tired of her silence. Strangeness.

On this plain of sand, Paris doesn't worry or wonder about whether or not he's doing the right thing because he knows this is what is best for the Trojans, and that is what he concerns himself with. Silence or no silence, scars or no scars, Briseis is the kind of girl that analyzes her every stratagem to the nth degree before performing or employing it, and in her quietude has the intuitional skills of a cat. She must realize that they must leave Carthage. Even so, he does waste the grains of sand that are the few seconds he spends reviewing his distorted image of logic, pinned to his thought process by strange and ulterior means. But there is nothing to stop him now.

On this plain of sand, Briseis stands before him like a beacon of personified fragility. There is something in her eyes as she looks at him, and there's something completely different in his own orbs. These are dangerous circumstances, and the equation that both would have it no other way is a heady mix of toxic intake.

"We are leaving Carthage in two days," he says in start.

The first shards of morning light are oddly pinned and distorted over the wisps of colour in the sky – the changing sands have such strange effects on the natural and pure. On this plain of sand, Briseis must face this new reality that has hit them all dead on in a mass ship collision, yielding a cut-off survivor count of their menial group of survivors.

"We Trojans need," Paris says in great certainty, "a new land to call our own." The unspoken words are deafening: a place to stay that didn't involve united empires knocking on city walls, or mile-long beaches and pristine walkways, or the false normalcy of unlocked doors. A place that would suit the broken Trojan party -the unlikely and balanced group- so that there would be an endless void of sound in which to drown Troy's white noise and sorrow, and an anonymity of being for Briseis, the undeclared traitor. They wanted the ability to disappear and not be noticed unless thus desired: they wanted such a tangible and manipulated invisibility that they could feel as sustenance under their fingers, theirs to capture and bottle indefinitely.

She says nothing. He sighs.

"Aeneas will leave the princess of Carthage for us. We all make great sacrifice in leaving this secure place, but like my father would have said," He pauses, wondering if he is worthy of invoking his father's memory, "the gods will reward us for our trials."

She says nothing.

"Apollo will give us a new home."

Nothing.

"Perhaps you might pray to him; pray for our quick deliverance."

Her eyebrows furrow, and he knows he has said the wrong thing. Her mouth opens, key in a lock, and for the first time in many weeks, her voice rings out and gets lost in the porous sand: "Do not mock what you do not understand."

Paris runs to her in euphoric excitement, grasping her shoulders and smiling greatly, for it was he who coaxed the words from her lips. "Briseis, we will create a new world for ourselves."

Nothing again, for it takes time for her to spill the words from her unwilling tongue, "Perhaps you might. I wish you all the luck that Carthage believes I possess, for I will not go with you."

And there it is.

On this plain of sand, there is a moment between these two in which a choice must be made.

Jaw set tightly and lips lacking words, Paris leaves her to the company of the sand, his hands curled into fists.

Neither of them realize, despite their differently careful natures, just how dangerous their ideas are. Dangerous for Briseis, because she is risking drowning herself in the facelessness of Carthage while seeking to disappear; dangerous for Paris and the Trojans, because they are still so young in body and in soul; but mostly, dangerous because they will all be alone some way or another, with none but their own sanity to keep themselves company.

(And of course, the most dangerous and tragic thing is to be left idle with no protection from your own mind. None of them know that they will need somebody to save them - from themselves.)


	12. Fanfare

**Fanfare **

_Disclaimer: See previous chapters; I don't like being redundant.

* * *

_

When Aeneas bids farewell to his tearful Princess Dido, and when the Trojans quit the great city of Carthage, there is little attention paid to their departure, and even less ceremony. There is no cause for great fanfare; Aeneas, who stills remains faceless amongst local mudslinging gossip circles, is no loved foreign personality. The people of Carthage are notoriously xenophobic – or, if you will, haughty towards foreigners. They are an empire that is on its rise, opposed to their view of Greece or Troy, which are on their falls. Besides, the Trojan party is such a motley crew of measly looking peasants, badly chiselled from a not-so-dextrous hand and malnourished, that they can command little to no respect.

Also, the lady Briseis does not leave with them.

Truly, fate has rendered itself into a scenario in which Briseis is the only relevant Trojan to the people of Carthage. She is like their newfound nymph, imported directly from the untouched and sacred vestal lands of Greece, a nymph who has bestown her favour upon them by lengthening her stay.

The few concerned with the Trojans gather at the outskirts of the city. The Trojans are armed with the charity of wagons and donkeys aplenty, all laced with fresh supplies for the holistic journey to a new land. While Dido wails, Briseis stares solemnly into the eyes of her cousin, Paris.

Her oath of silence since abandoned, her countrymen's strained good opinion of her has been thrown into greater disarray. Wilfully having pulled the silk over their own eyes, Briseis' act of defiance concerning all of their allegiance to their fallen land is a sharp shock – water in their faces – almost like stamping on their faith. They had not wished to reimagine her as the great Achilles' woman – the lover of their enemy's greatest warrior – and so they had taken her silence as a kind of regretful, shamed sacrifice to the scorned god Apollo. But with her silence so cheerfully abandoned, the oath discovered as nothing but a feminine whim, they whisper to another like a basket of snakes.

This all means nothing to Paris because he is brash, young, and unconcerned with the politik of his people – the same characteristics that led his country to its defeat. He takes her hand in his, like holding a jasmine flower in his palm and softly searching for the shoot of sugary water within, and implores her with those eyes of his, which are so renowned. He descends soft words upon her, tokens: "Don't make us leave you in this place, cousin."

Briseis holds herself differently, displays a new countenance, and her voice has a feminine lilt, softly seductive, that he does not recall from their days of childhood. Like a new person, she stands before him, and only her eyes betray the warmth she feels for him still, the love that springs from nostalgia. She tells him: "When I have found the contentment I dream of, I will send a messenger to you; wherever you are." Then, sympathetically, "You are not leaving me to my death, Paris."

To him, these words are not enough, but Helen, beautiful Helen, draws him away – for all of their benefits. It is the most kindly and sensitive action Briseis has seen the Greek beauty make in all their time together.

Andromache, stoic and with no improper pride, walks to Briseis with a glide that cannot be imitated. She kisses her on either cheek, slowly, and holds the younger woman in a one-armed embrace tightly. Aside from Paris, Briseis is the last link she has to her blissful history in Troy, and the memories flow like wine under Dionysus' blessing from the nooks and crannies of her mind. Many moments pass and they still embrace each other, until Briseis leans down to lay a chaste kiss upon the down forehead of her nephew, Astyanax, who grips the brown curls of her hair in a tiny fist. Nothing is said between these two women, until Andromache moves towards a wagon, saying only, "We will see each other again," and for once, it is Briseis who is left with a watertight throat and tears in her eyes.

There are other adieus as well, but they are unimportant. Flanked by perfunctory Carthaginians guards, Briseis watches the convey pack up into a tight and cohesive whole with Aeneas at the helm. She watches them with liquid dark orbs until their charcoal shadows are eclipsed by the sun. When she is old and looks back on her time, Briseis will probably say that this moment marks her ascension into adulthood. It is not her introduction into the sisterhood of Apollo, nor is it when her back first meets the furs upon Achilles' warm bed. She is finally completely and utterly alone, to be governed by her own decisions.

Or so she thinks.

* * *

Briseis is not interested in Carthaginian politics. Now that she has been left alone by her companions in this great and exotic place, the officials and heads of state have fewer qualms about coming to her and asking opinions from her of military strategy. They cling to the ideal of her as their figurehead, a patroness of luck all their own to be put upon a pedestal, as if she is the driftwood that would keep them afloat in a shipwreck. It is a routine that grows tiresome for Briseis very quickly, and she begins to wonder what she will do with herself now that she is alone once more.

Now this is when Briseis, as intelligent as she may be, will show her naivety – that kind of blissful ignorance that comes standard with youth. She believes that the people of Carthage will set her free like a benevolent keeper of doves, that they would gift her with great and lofty amounts of nourishment and supplies for her journey to wherever – after all, they will not defy the wishes of their patroness, would they? She begins to pour over the crude maps of the world, from Carthage to the Asia Minor, that she finds in the library. She is so absorbed by possibilities that she does not take notice of the shadows that darken the doorways near to her, nor does she hear the whispers exchanged between these shadows, muffled slightly by the weight of the drapery:

_"She seeks to leave us. Look how she studies the maps. She prepares for a journey!"_

_"If she wills it, must we not let her go? Would that not reverse our favour in the eyes of the Fates?"_

_"Carthage is on the eve of its greatest conquest! The reason why we chose this time to strike involved our possession of the Lady of Luck – we cannot risk letting her go."_

They send people to her rooms at spontaneous moments, hoping to catch her before she disappears from their grasp like the smoke that rises from their incense burners. They push past the curtains that cordon off the more private areas of her chambers, often catching her in the same position: she sits on her bed, long and slender legs crossed and the drapes of her dress spilling over them like water, eyes farther away than any citizen of Carthage has ever travelled before.

The female servants deign to ask Briseis her thoughts, their passions for gossip unbridled and never shameful: "My lady, what is it you think of?"

She murmurs back to them dreamily, her eyes unfocused and never settling on her addressor, "I think of my home: of the great walls, of my cousin, and of the beach. I think of eyes the colour of the blue in the sea and of hair made of sunlight."

They say very suggestively, "That's a very romantic prospect, my lady. Was this man your lover?"

There is silence for a few moments, until Briseis' eyes swing back into focus and settle upon her questioner, upon their eager eyes. Then she chastises them, some of her old playfulness emerging for a roundabout run: "Why do you ask me these things? Be gone; it's not proper to talk of such things."

But when the servants and well and gone, she lies back amid the sheets of her bed, one hand clasped tightly to her breastbone, and allows herself to again think of Achilles, and of his expression as he told her how she was his only peace. She imagines the glory of his funeral pyre, of his named carved all over Greece deeply within stone, and of his triumphant visage had he been able to see his renown, and two wet trails snake over the smoothly angled planes of her cheekbones.

She is in this exact position, the tears having only just begun to slide from her eyes, when the three chartered soldiers of Carthage sneak softly into her room. They approach her bed unnoticed, her eyelids smoothed over her eyes and censoring her sight, and she only screams when the three grab her limbs and pull her from the bed to stand on her feet. Briseis shudders, screaming, and throws herself backwards in an effort to escape them, but only thrusts herself into the hard muscle of another soldier. His arms lock around her at her waist, holding her own arms to her sides. She screams again, and they laugh.

"No need to worry, little lady, no harm will come to you." They leer at her, and she is sickened by their complete nonchalance at the whole spectacle.

"Why are you doing this…let me go – please!" She strains against the arms holding her, kicking her legs ineffectually. The soldier holding her from the back rubs his hand from her stomach to just under her breasts very suggestively, breathing hard in her ear. His breaths are raspy and hot, and she shudders again, reminded of her capture what seems like so long ago in the temple of Apollo. Though she cannot see her captor, she can feel his face turn into a nasty smirk.

Briseis is afraid; there is no person in this entire city that would dedicate themselves to saving her. Hector is dead, Paris and Andromache gone, and Achilles…probably watching her from the Elysian Fields in Hades. She wants to retch, but the soldier's grip on her belly is too tight to allow anything of the kind. His hands begin to travel even higher, and she screams again.

One of the other soldiers unsheathes his sword and pokes her captor's offending hand with it. "No touching! Did you _wish_ for your execution?" The hand slips back down, and Briseis breathes slightly easier. Her eyes are wide, attempting to take in the entire situation, trying to understand.

With a harsh push from behind, the soldiers begin to walk Briseis out of her chambers, and she prays for some kind of favourable sign from the gods. As they enter the hallway awkwardly due to her haphazard struggles, she lays eyes upon various familiar servants and palace guards. But when she calls to them for aid, they all simply stare at her curiously, watching soldiers of their own army take her away. It is a harsh reality for her to face: the truth that she has absolutely no allies within five thousand paces of her. Fatigued, her struggles cease somewhat, and she makes eye contact with one of the soldiers. "Please…"she begs softly, "please tell me why you are doing this."

The soldier laughs, "No need for dramatics, my lady – we're following orders. The generals feared you wished to leave Carthage at the very moment that we needed your favour the most."

Down the stairs, she walks in an ungainly fashion, as the soldier still keeps his arms loosely about her waif-like body. Her eyes furrow. "What are you talking of?"

The soldier who seems to be in charge of this operation doesn't answer as he leads their small party to the bottom of the stairs, through a corridor, and to a double-doorway of heavy wood that Briseis has not seen before. He pushes the doors open with effort, the veins popping slightly in his forehead, and their group marches through. Briseis' breath catches in her throat and she staggers, overcome by the sight laid out before her eyes. The soldier turns back to her. "Why, we're going to war, and you will be our goddess of fortune. Carthage will conquer Mycenae, who you surely must despise for conquering your own homeland. You will be accompanying us, to ensure the gods favour."

As they lead her through the throng, Briseis' mind is no longer resting on the words of the soldier. She turns her head this way and that, utterly disbelieving of the entire situation. The room is filled with weaponry, wood, soldiers and thousands of banners and standards, all of them bearing the same image: the painted profile of her very own face, the symbol of fortune, and the name of Carthage emblazoned across it.

She allows herself, this time, to be sick.

* * *

He stands alone, and yet completely surrounded and crowded by his own memories, in the stone ruins that overlook the seas in Phtia. Wearing only his simple tunic of expensive blue thread and his sword held loosely by the circle of his fingers, Achilles calls to mind all the sessions of fighting he spent here with Patroclus; all the laughter and sweat and blood and taunts; all for nothing, all for death. He sneers at the ground though there is nobody around to see it, still angry, but the fury is a fury only for himself. He has lost everything.

Achilles is both thankful and hateful to be back in Phtia, where he claims lordship over the surrounding lands and people. It is a place controlled easily enough, and often remains untouched by change for years and years – how he prefers it. Athens and Sparta often sicken him, because peoples who spend their entire lives sitting and philosophizing about situations they could never grasp populate them. Achilles is not a stupid man by any regard – his mother saw well to his full education, fighting aside – but when he stated his opinions, he always was certain to be well-founded in them, so as to prevent any possible humiliation at another's hands. Greek kings and lords so loved to humiliate each other.

Travelling the sea with Odysseus and his crew, he healed quickly enough with the fresh salt sea and air to continually cleanse the wounds he'd endured at the hands of the Trojan prince. He savoured the pain they'd given them, scratched at the scabbing so as to ensure scarring, because Achilles always took a care to remember every wound he received and learned from it – making him further invincible. It was a circular process, and he loved it. Upon the sea, Odysseus encountered a convoy of Greek ships, also having left Troy only earlier, which had included the Myrmidons. Achilles had given thanks to Odysseus for his care and aid, promising to send gifts from Phtia in a tangible thanks, and had jumped from one ship to the other, finding himself again with his kinsmen. Thus reunited, they had returned to Phtia soon enough, meeting tearful crowds and fawning women. The pleasure Achilles took in having defied his mother's foresight was short-lived, and he refamiliarized himself with the monotony that came from the time at home, between wars.

And most of the time, he thought of the lover he had taken in Troy, the priestess who had so defied and surpassed him and his every assumption and expectation, the woman who turned the blood within him which pumped so steadily even in the most vicious battle to fire, the lover he had willed to make his woman until the end of his days. Achilles took little pleasure from the women he had encountered and lain with since that time, finding himself a changed man and despising himself for it.

He needed release.

It came.

"My lord?" Eudorus waits attentively in regular dress at the edge of the ruins, ever mindful of his lord's privacy. Of all the people in the land, Eudoras probably knows Achilles' habits and manners the best, after his own mother – but even Thetis would not recognize her own son, should she ever see him in battle.

Achilles does not turn, but he moves his head so as to give his attention. He asks softly, "What is it, Eudorus?"

Knowing well what Achilles thinks about the subject of other Greek lands begging for his assistance, he approaches the topic as subtly as possible. "My lord, an emissary from Mycenae came to your house this morning with heralds." Eudorus hopes without avail that his lord might catch his hint without dragging out the explanation, as he was so often inclined to do.

Chuckling lightly, as he is familiar with the diplomatic approach of his second, Achilles asks innocently, "Oh yes? And how is life in Peloponnesus?"

Gravely, "It is a summons for war, my lord." Eudorus' blue eyes flash at the word, betraying his own inward excitement at the possibility of another war. He, like Achilles, is a warrior, and lives to bring death to others. His lord, who has turned completely and begun to walk towards him, does not miss his emotion. Amusement is plain upon his face.

Stopping in front of his soldier, Achilles says, "Really? And tell me, Eudorus, why do you think I should care about the house and land of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, who usurped the throne?" he looks past Eudorus out into the sea, a characteristically wistful expression adorning his face.

Unused to being consulted for such a large decision, Eudorus is not certain if Achilles is jesting or being completely serious. Often, he did both at the exact same time, which made for a rather unwieldy conversation. He begins tentatively. "Well, my lord, they are fairer rulers than Agamemnon himself."

Achilles scoffs lightly, powerful arms bronzed and crossed before him, "Not enough to risk my life and the lives of my men." His eyes remain on some far-off dawn.

The corner of Eudorus' mouth turns up, and his eyes flash again. He says, again in his distinctly polite tone, "The family of my wife lives in Mycenae, my lord."

This volley rests between the two of them for a few moments, until Achilles' eyes slide back to meet his second's. There is a playfulness there, and it suggests without shame that war really is only a game to the legendary warrior. "Really?" He cocks an eyebrow, and then smiles. He begins to walk briskly out of the ruins, and down the path to the nearest village, his soldier following. "Well then, Eudorus, the Myrmidons shall go to war for your wife's family, and them alone." He stops, and levels a mock-serious look at him. "That is, with your consent?"

Eudorus inclines his body slightly in a bow, accepting the acknowledgment Achilles was giving him. "Of course, my lord." They start walking again, quickly entering the extremities of the village and seeing the familiar faces of his men going about their home life.

Venturing for very few details, Achilles asks briskly, "And the enemy?"

Falling into his customary briefing role, Eudorus outlines the situation very simply. "Carthage, my lord. They claim to have an immortal goddess on their side; a goddess who controls fortune. They have not lost a battle since this woman came to them." His voice holds a treble of awe in it, for though he is a known vicious soldier, he also is a man very respectful of the power of the gods.

"A goddess of fortune?" Achilles laughs, and then looks around to meet the eyes of any of his men present. They all straighten, listening to whatever he has to say to them, somehow sensing that his anticipation probably signifies yet another impending war to be had. Achilles continues, "They'll need more than a woman to stay the Myrmidons." He roars to his soldiers, reminiscent of the time on the ship before touching the sands of Troy, "We are lions, men!"

There is a collective roar about the village, quickly picked up by any who had missed the call. Eudorus runs lightly down the path alone to the next village, his task to inform the soldiers to prepare for battle, as those present disappear into their homes, and Achilles jogs to his own grand home to make preparations for travel.


	13. A Forest

**A Forest  
**_Disclaimer: See previous chapters; I don't like being redundant.

* * *

_

In what seems like a very long time ago – lifetimes, even; lovers and killers, fruit and sand and spears have passed; such a long time ago – Briseis as a child went on a voyage out of Troy. Together like a family of children governed by watchful Hector, she and Paris and Troilus and others banded like a caravan and ventured out of Troy and past Mount Ida with nothing but curiosity and childish vivacity holding their hearts. There was no purpose in the journey, no diplomacy to be made and unfurled and certainly no enemy soldiers with throats bared for the cutting: it was a spur-of-the-moment voyage on horseback brought on by Paris and Briseis' questions of 'what is it like beyond Mount Ida?', and Hector's benevolence in humouring their quest. _That_ is the spirit in which Briseis now remembers Troy: alone, aloof, and apart, not coldly so but in the sense of a utopia, no change, with exploration instead of wars to be had. It was a childish notion, but she does not consider that to be negative.

And so on they went, their caravan of young horse riders, with Hector at the helm and with Troilus at the back, the sun of Apollo bronzing their faces as they left Troy and ventured away from the sea and into what they thought of as 'new lands'. The terrain changed with the passing of every hoofbeat, away from the metallic sands of the plains of Troy and into the grasses, lemons and yellows and soft pistachio tints, which collected like fur around the hoofs of their horses. And then from the grasses sprang stunted trees, the gnarled tendons of their bark twisted this way and that from the force of the winds off Poseidon's waters, like old wise women turned to trees by the gods. And, amid their laughter and childsplay, came the lush greens that even brought an easy smile to Hector's face; the grasses that darkened and swelled with good water, the flowers and insects crawling from every cranny, great trees whose leaves hung over them and brushed against their faces; pistachios hanging in great boughs of bright bright green. A forest: it was a teeming mass of life, both one colour, and many shades of one colour, and then all colours all at once. It shimmered with life and death and transitions, a triangle of existence. And so they all knew: the forest exists beyond Mount Ida, and it was a chaotic, addictive place that they would never forget.

Just a forest.

* * *

Without Achilles there to be her interpreter, war grows chaotic around Briseis. The soldiers of Carthage, running like ants to every possible place with every possible purpose, the glint of sunlight off their swords as they moved, the sound of iron on iron even in the dead of the night, the rhythmic beating of the oars against the waves. It is chaos of the senses for her, and so Briseis is reminded of the forest.

Sitting protected on the edge of the flagship, closely surrounded by guarding ships, Briseis Lady of Fortune is often consulted in matters of strategy. They have gotten to know her well enough to manipulate her, the Carthaginians have: they know that they can leave her to her own devices on the ship, because she treasures life and her mortality far too much to throw it away at their expense.

(What they don't know is the reasoning for this: how the legendary warrior Achilles, the most violent man in the world, told her of the value of mortality: _"The gods envy us because we're mortal…that every moment might be our last; it makes everything that much more beautiful…we will never be here again."_ They don't know how she sees the bright of his eyes everywhere she looks.)

What they –the generals of Carthage, that is- know is that they _need_ this slip of a girl: the men's morale rests upon her shoulders. Carthage would never have been able to rationalize an attack on powerful Mycenae so early in history. Their only tool against the Greeks is Briseis' Fortune, which is why her image is emblazoned across their banners, which is why they ask her input on strategy: so they can tell the men, "_Lady Briseis told us directly._" They come usually just after the sun lifts off the golden cusp of the horizon, because she is always in the same place, having risen from her pallet early. She sits on the gunwale of the ship, perched like a skittish bird; slipped wings held protectively over her body. They ask questions:

"How should we broach the shore?" They say,

Or, "Would Fortune smile on us if we attacked Argos?"

Briseis murmurs without emotion or expression, but the most astounding part of the whole affair is that the generals actually do glean an answer from her responses. They thank her profusely for her input, as if it were willingly and happily given, as if they hadn't locked her in her stone chambers back in Carthage for weeks until the day they had set sail amid the fleet, as if she felt some kind of loyalty to their people because they had provided for the Trojans. Through her noncommittal answers, they have somehow ended up where they are: on the edge of the Ionian Sea, the coast of Peloponnesus well in sight. The men rustle with anticipation, dogs licking their jowls as if tasting the scent of the coming battle, the proximity to war making their scuttling further frantic. The chaos intensifies, as if given the blessing and touched by Dionysus, and that brings Briseis back to the forest.

A forest: so empty and so alone, and yet so chaotic and full of life, shimmering and frothing up the surfaces. Like herself, how she feels, what it all means to her.

When the Greeks capture her, Briseis wonders in silence perched upon her gunwale, (for they most certainly would – the Carthaginians were fools for believing they could take Mycenae so unprepared) what would happen? Would the Greeks know her face? And if they did, how would they have known it? Back on the sands of Troy, her position as Achilles' woman was well known and well respected, as Achilles was an awesome and fearsome force unable to be reckoned with. If the Greeks knew her from then, would they keep her alive out of respect? Or perhaps see fit to sacrifice her on Achilles' tomb, as so many women were in Greek tradition? Or would they just slay her on the spot, a quick slide of blade across her smooth white throat, because her lover was dead? Or might they just kill her because they know her face from the banners of Carthage? Or what if they chose to keep her as a captive once again, submitting her as concubine to some lesser lord? If that were the case, Briseis decides, she will slit her own throat before her bare skin touched the pallet of any other man, and her soul will be pulled down to Hades to rejoin her only lover once again.

The beaches draw ever closer, and a cry goes up from deep within the coherent whole that is the soldiers. She feels the sense of chaos again, that lost sense of overflowing life. A hand grasps her arm, belonging to a face she is used to, pulling her towards the lower level of the boat: "My lady, please stay below deck. We are about to land on the beaches!" As Briseis complies and takes her steps down carefully, she sees her image raised high on the sail of the ship for a brief moment before shielding her eyes and ducking below.

The door thumps over her and she is alone – finally – in the deep of the ship. In the dark. She sighs, sitting on a box.

Outside, she imagines a forest; overgrown and waiting to be shorn.

* * *

"How many ships?"

"Some two hundred, I would say – fifty good soldiers to a ship – _Carthaginians_, mind you." Achilles and Diomedes share a laugh at their enemy's expense as they stand with their armies, in complete battle regalia, high up from the beaches of the coast amid the low grasses of Greece. Diomedes adds, "All bearing the same banner, also; their _lady of fortune_." He eyes the black and red profile etched onto the sails of the ships laid out like toys before them, ever nearing the shores, and sneers at the serene expression on the woman's visage.

Without emotion, Achilles responds, "Let them keep their idols to their temples; they have little effect against my sword." His hand grips idly on the hilt of his sword, his fingers twitching at the thought of their oncoming activity.

"Indeed."

He narrows his eyes, scanning laterally like a tactician and briefly wishing for the presence of Odysseus. Diomedes, however, is as good of a replacement as any, as is the thought of wise Nestor up in the palace in the hills. Achilles matches the Greeks forces waiting at attention on the beach with those that are loaded on the boats. "Two hundred ships…if we draw them all out, we might take them in a matter of days." He glances at his friend.

Observing the oncoming enemy still, Diomedes informs him, "Yes. I believe that's the approach commanded by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra…tactfully suggested by Nestor."

Decidedly bored and satisfied with his appraisal, Achilles turns to him fully and addresses the topic with disdain. Arrogance drawn from his heady power laces his voice: "You mean they haven't been killed yet? Where are Agamemnon's sons…the man was a drunkard for a king, but any excuse for blood debt is worthwhile. I'll take no orders from that sack of wine's shrew and her lover. Whether you follow my Myrmidons, Diomedes, is your decision." He smirks, chancing a look at his friend's face, knowing how the offer must pull at him. Diomedes, after all, is a great warrior.

He sighs wistfully, but not weakly. "Such decisions are not so easily made when you're a king, Achilles."

Achilles begins to walk away, but does not halt himself from correcting, "You forget, dear friend, that I _am_ a king. I see no swift retribution coming at me or my men."

Turning back to his retreating form, Diomedes says astutely, "Only you have that fortune, friend."

"Fortune?" Achilles stops, halfway between Diomedes and Eudorus, who waits for him and his command lower in the hills. The Myrmidons are not so far away. Achilles motions towards the oncoming Carthaginians with the proud curve of his chin, and says, "Leave fortune to them, and to their _lady_. I have my sword. Come fight with me, Diomedes, and we will show them our glory." And he leaves, his sword lightly touching his thigh as he walks.

Diomedes, after a short laugh to himself, follows.

* * *

Sometime during the course of the first day of battle as Achilles, like a colossal wave of fire sweeps through the ranks of Carthage with his men towards the ships, cuts down man after man after man, leaving wives and children and brothers and sisters, parents and friends to grieve back in their homeland of Carthage without remorse, he fells a man with a clean stab through and matches his eyes with his won. And then the man says the strangest thing:

"For our lady Briseis…" and he dies.

And Achilles is stilled, a firestorm quelled if only for a moment, though the fire burns brighter as it swirls in the depths of his eyes and as his thoughts turn upon themselves in a haze of confusion. It lasts many seconds, and those men of his who see him are astounded, as Achilles is never still in battle, never peaceful, never not killing.

But the moment passes, and soon he is again in motion, grasses put to flame again, and life departing to Hades with every swing of his sword.

Not far off, Briseis sits, and imagines her forest.


	14. The Archer

**The Archer  
**_Disclaimer: See previous chapters; I don't like being redundant.

* * *

_

War isn't all blood and iron and death, she once believed. There were times when it could get sweet, and the sweetness she had beheld in those moments was probably the most pure and tangible emotion she had experienced in all of her short life. Perhaps lying there in Achilles' arms she had been the most alive, centred in a camp of soldiers whose livelihoods thrived on death – such a swirling mass of contradictions. War isn't all blood and iron and death, it was true, and there were times when it could be nostalgic. The memories she had faced when running up the sandy plains of the beach before Troy, running from the Greek camp in face of her dear cousin's death, were tactile to her. The time she has passed and the life she has lived has been imbued with the essence of war, so in considering war, she must consider herself. By now, the two seem inseparable, and she is unsure of where she ends and the war begins. Perhaps even more so now, when her image is the guiding light to the Carthaginians, the banner by which they embolden themselves to join the fray, the light they see when they fall into the dust and their soul is taken down into Hades.

War isn't all blood and iron and death, but the moments of blood and iron and death exist nonetheless, and they are hardy moments that test the resilience of the spirit. Briseis feels it now, a pressure upon her spirit, as she comes back to herself—sitting in the hold of a ship.

It is not a time to make philosophy; it is a time of war.

There are trampling sounds above, not entirely out of the ordinary, and soon they become hastened footsteps travelling down the steep steps into the hold of a ship. The footsteps belong to a Carthaginian footsoldier, his face unremarkable save for the streaks of blood and sand that cake his skin and armour. It is not a glorious sight. It is a piteous one; the man shakes, his skin quivering even out of battle, and his eyes are permanently widened in a blood frenzy. He lays eyes on Briseis and nods, holding out his arm and gesturing wildly. His sputters are inelegant, and characteristic of the moment they are trapped in.

"My lady! Please, you must leave the ship now! The Greeks are advancing, they will retake the shore, surely—you must leave the ship! They will burn you alive! The archers have lit their arrows!" When she does not move immediately he rushes forward, more sputtered apologies running forth, his fingers tightly grasping her smooth forearm. They leave faint smears of blood on her skin now, the taint of battle upon Briseis as well, and she loses her composure as he pulls her to the stairs.

"Where am I to go?" The soldier does not answer, but his fingers are strong around her wrist so that if she stopped her following footsteps, his jarring movements would surely break her arm. Her feet stumble inelegantly around the wood of the stairs, her arm turned at an awkward angle, but the soldier does not care. He pulls her up, the light from the day breaking now against the white of her skin and the blood smears on her arm. "Sir! Where am I to—"

The soldier whirls around to Briseis, and finally meets her eyes. It is she who now shies away, as if the light in this man's eyes were a kind of knowledge she does not wish to possess. He breathes heavily, and tells her, "Lady, the Greeks are burning the ship. I must rejoin my comrades, and die fighting. Take cover where you will…" He looks her up and down, his eyes scraping unpleasantly over her body, and then sneers very subtly, "…This is more your land then mine, perhaps they will protect you. Perhaps not."

They stand on the abandoned ship deck, oars askew and haphazard over the unsanded wood, and the sight upon the shore finally makes an impression upon Briseis. Poor, sweet Briseis, who thinks she knows something about war.

The soldier leaves her, her arm released and dead at her side. He runs to the bow of the boat and jumps out, the ring of his sword surely joining the rest upon the reddened sand below. But she does not notice, because she is transfixed by the sight before her, and remains so for some time. It is a primal sight, one of blood sinking into the sand, and blood darkening as it dries upon the armour of the soldiers. Men, with their limbs streaked by grime and sweat and sand and blood, men all with their respective histories, all men with wives and children or lovers and friends…like a net, it seems to Briseis, as she visualizes the impact upon the world even this one battle will have, beyond the battlefield. The iron and metal of their armour and weaponry, making deadly ringing noises through the air. She watches death; men falling and attempting to revive themselves, and others just lying so very still.

The Greeks have a prowess in them that overpowers the Carthaginians. Gone is the pride of the people from that faraway exotic land, the banners and standards bearing Briseis' own image long since trampled underfoot. Greeks, with their superior experience and weapons make the foreigners looks like ignorant savages—and Briseis does not know who she wishes will emerge victorious, though she certainly knows the reality of the situation. Despite what they think, she is no lady of luck, no vassal of favour sent from the gods. And even if she was, Briseis feels as though she does not want either side to win, for either way her situation is hopeless. A new sense of nihilism pervades her; a desperation borne of the events back in Troy that had not hit her until this very moment.

She has been wandering in the desert too long.

And as the Greeks approach the ships and the sails begin to catch fire, Briseis can almost see her patron Apollo, the Golden Archer, come down from the heights of Mount Olympus in great and long strides, drop to a knee and draw his silver bow. The men fall around and before her, and in her mind, Briseis sees this as Apollo's final retribution on her infidelity to him – a tangible vengeance. The cries of the soldiers and the dying fill her ears.

Blindly and out of fear, she runs—in no particular direction. At first, she escapes from the gunwales of the ship, and when Briseis finds herself on the sand of the battlefield with the dead at her feet, she runs again towards the wisps of green grass she can discern where the beach ends and Greece begins. Through the battling men she runs—through the sprays of blood and arrows—as if fearless, or the closest thing to fearless, because she has almost abandoned her fear in face of the nothingness of her present that could swallow her.

Unfortunately, the soldiers around her are not in accordance with that fearlessness. A bloodied solder of Carthage, still standing, grasps her arm and again smears more blood on her skin, atop that which the other soldier smeared there first. The wildness in his eyes frightens Briseis and she screams shortly, pulling back to no avail. "My lady," the soldier pants at her, "what are you doing?"

She opens her mouth to speak, almost finding relief in the easiness of answering a question. But Apollo will not allow her even this small comfort in the devastation of his exacting vengeance, and the soldier's life leaves through his eyes when another sword pierces through his armour and body, the point emerging from his chest. His dead body falls upon the sand, the blood joining the rest, and Briseis' eyes meet those that surely belong to a Greek soldier. She prays inwardly that this might be some Greek man she recognizes…but no.

The Greek looks her up and down, his eyes slanting quickly over the richness and value of his clothing and appearance, and he grins, a delighted sound coming from deep within his chest. Briseis screams and tries to pull back, but now for the third time, fingers close over her arm and she is unable to pull away. The Greek soldier drags her through the sand with one hand, laughing maniacally with the fervour of battle in his mind, while his other arm continues to slash his way through the melee of battling soldiers. Struggling; twisting and turning however she can, Briseis only succeeds in wrenching her joints and her bones, pain sharpening its way through her limbs in cracks of sickening yellow light. Her energy leaves her quickly through her struggles, and soon the Greek is dragging a near-limp woman by a single hand.

They reach the threshold of the beach, where the grasses come out slightly before curving sharply down into the sand to form an overhang. The battle is on the beach solely, and there are few people in this area. The soldier heaves her around and throws Briseis into the sand before him, the overhang of the grass cutting the light of Apollo somewhat. Far too weak to make much movement, she can only watch as the soldier throws down his weapons and struggles with the clasps of his armour. Briseis only groans slightly, a sad and pathetic sound she has heard only from very sick, diseased and dying people, unable to accept what is happening.

And then, in that moment, it is as though the gods intervene.

A new voice, fresh and strong and in lilting, familiar Greek, sounds out to them—or in particular, to her Greek tormentor. "You! Soldier!" He turns wildly to peer at his surroundings, searching for the owner of the voice, when it sounds again—closer. "What person have you there?"

The voice seems to come from above, in her delirium, Briseis almost believes it to be the voice of a god. But it is not so; a man jumps down from the grassy overhang to stand before the soldier. The owner of the voice is more richly dressed and decorated than the soldier, and she correctly assumes him to be a Greek officer. His face is unfamiliar as well. Closing her eyes in extreme weariness, Briseis can only listen to their brief dialogue:

"What woman is this?"

"Sir, I found her on the beach—I assumed her to be spoils of Carthage—"

"—That is not for you to decide. The enemy has little reason for bringing women to these shores, especially wealthy ones. She must be important."

"My lord—"

"I will take charge of her from here; you will return to your post, soldier."

"But my lord—"

"You are dismissed, soldier." The finality in the officer's tone leaves no room for question, and when Briseis next opens her eyes, the officer is observing her closely and the soldier is nowhere to bee seen. Kneeling before her, he takes her face in his hands and peers at her, his fingers tracing the lines of her face as if he were examining a new purchase. When she attempts to pull away he is ready, a dagger flashing out of nowhere and its blade digging into her neck. The officer breathes softly, his voice a deadly calm. "You will give me no trouble, or I shall cut your throat." He tilts her head up, and shakes her firmly until Briseis' eyes meet his own, and she nods shakily.

Satisfied, he sheathes the weapon somewhere on his person and hauls her up. Silently, they both clamber up onto the grass overhang, and before Briseis can regain her bearings, he is pulling her across the plains towards a collection of tents. She understands. She is being brought to the commanders.

Halfway there, the officer halts and turns, taking her face in his hands once more. He peers at her more closely, and then breathes, "It is _your_ face upon the banners of the barbarians, is it not?" When Briseis says nothing, he only nods to himself and then speaks again, "You look more Greek than Carthaginian, I can give you that." They start again for the tents.

After taking a mere five paces, Briseis stops uncertainly, wavering on her feet. The officer turns back to glare at her, and perhaps threaten her with his knife again, but instead, her finds her passed out upon the ground at his feet, her skin clammy and cool. He sighs, kneels, and picks her up into his arms, carrying her the rest of the short distance into the grandest tent in the camp.

Nodding to the guards, he passes through the entry flaps to the tent to be greeted with the sight of a strong-looking man sitting upon a stool, the wound in his leg being treated and sewn by two soldiers. Laying Briseis upon the ground, he says, "My lord Diomedes, I give you the patron woman of the invaders."

All three of the new men, both the soldiers treating the wound and the lord himself, turn to stare at the officer and at the woman on the ground. The lord—Diomedes—makes a sound, and then speaks. "Is that so?" He says, looking quizzically at the small form of the woman before him. "Strange."

Suddenly, one of the men treating his wound makes a strangled noise from within his throat, his blue eyes flashing at the sight of the woman. "My lord…" He begins, and then trails off uncertainly, his eyes never leaving the form upon the ground.

Diomedes turns to regard the soldier directly, and then answers, "Yes, Eudorus? Do not worry, you may return to the fray within moments."

Coughing uncertainly and standing, Eudorus pauses before speaking uncertainly, "This woman…"

Both the officer and the king look at him curiously, "Yes?"

He looks them both directly in the eyes. "She belongs to Achilles."

Unsuspecting of the drama around her, Briseis sleeps in fever dreams, her mind filled with visions of blood, of banners, and of the Great and Golden Archer, methodically drawing his bow and slaying any soldier who might stand before her.


	15. Love Part 1 of 2

**Love**.

_Disclaimer: See previous chapters; I hate being redundant._

_Notes: Well, as much as I hate myself for doing this, for the moment I am splitting this chapter in half. I finally decided upon a narrative theme and motif for this last chapter (no easy task, I'm telling you, considering that it had better be good…it's the last chapter!) and got to serious writing. However, the anticipated meeting scene for Briseis and Achilles is a difficult one for me to write, and I'd rather not rush writing it today. SO, I am putting out this half of the chapter, then I'm flying out on vacation tomorrow for two weeks. The second half will be written by the time I come back, and then all will be completed. I hope you all will forgive me for the disjointedness; I can barely deal with posting half a chapter myself. Anyway, please do drop me a line and let me know what you think. Cheers!

* * *

_

Voices, floating in and out of her head. Voices, discussing, dissecting her.

They talk in regal tones, authoritative, in trebles that had at one time been familiar to Briseis. Her mind casts back to before all of this, back to the haven past the Temple of Apollo, past the walls of Troy. Back to beloved cousins and uncles and gilded thrones, and throne rooms where important matters of the state were discussed and decided upon in strong voices much like those fading in and out of her consciousness now. The voices bring her back to Troy. Back to a time before soldiers and war. Before pomegranates. Before Achilles.

_"She belongs to Achilles? What in the name of Zeus does that mean? Speak quickly, Eudorus!"_

The whiteness that surrounds her even behind the protective embrace of her eyelids pervades Briseis physically, as if sinking into her every pore. A sun sickness, she knows, from venturing out of doors without a proper head covering. Her limbs are heavy, sluggish, and she has not the energy to move even a single muscle. She wonders idly is this is what dying is like; this foreign detachment from the physical self, this removed observation of her surroundings without care or purpose for what happens next.

"My lord…she was his captive…a prisoner of war…" 

There is a tough ache building in her chest – it is an ache for her family. It is only in this moment that Briseis begins to realize just how far away she is from all she has ever known. The dawn of this knowledge has left her untouched from the moment she has told Paris to leave her behind in Carthage…and during the moments of unfortunate events that have led her to Greek shores. There is an ache in her chest, and it is an ache of her love…a powerful, persisting love beyond death and circumstance, a love for her country, her family, the cousins and uncles and nephews, her gods, her lover. She carries them—the dead, and her love for them, with her through her every living moment – and she knows they are with her because of this persistent ache in her chest. In this moment, it is the only thing that is truly hers: her face belongs to Carthaginians banners, her body to her captors, her mind to her fallen gods…but her love keeps her alive.

_"Achilles and the Myrmidons have met the Carthaginians in battle before? He had not spoken of it earlier…"_

She now understands the spirit of the tale she overheard what seems so long ago, when—ironically!—safely entrenched in the Greek camp upon Troy's beaches and within Achilles' grasp. The tale of a Mycenaean who took a Corinthian wife and lost his child because of their differences in nationality had seemed appropriate to her at the time, a true war story. That is still true to Briseis, _but_, she thinks, she missed an integral aspect of understanding: the man who told the story had no sadness or bitterness inflecting his voice—why? He lost his child because of his own decision…why should he not be tortured by it?

Briseis knows now why he tells his story with a note of pride in his voice, despite it all: thinking of his wife—and his lost child—is his manner of loving them while he is far from them, be that distance from Troy to Greece…or the width of the river Styx. He tells stories of them, thinks of them constantly, and his love keeps them alive in his mind. Much like Briseis herself does now, about all those she loves. If she had the strength within her, she would raise her voice to the high heavens of Mount Olympus and sing proudly of Hector the Tamer of Horses, of beautiful Paris and his stolen wife Helen of Sparta, of little Astyanax and wise, serene Andromache…and of Achilles, the Destroyer.

_"No, my lord. She isn't from Carthage. She…she is from Troy. We found her in the temple there."_

The sad reality, however, is that she cannot do as she wishes: be it sing or dance or tell tall tales, or even walk away from this bloodstained canvas of a beach battlefield. The fatigue from her long journey, nefariously building at the back of her mind, and her overbearing sadness have finally washed over her—like the waves of the blue, bottomless Aegean—and left her in this inglorious heap upon the floor. At the feet of yet another collection of Greek lords who, Apollo help her, might find a new way to further the nadir of her despair.

Priestesses don't despair because their emotions are already filled to the brim with love and faith and hope for their gods. But Briseis does despair, she does. The slow tears begin to travel over her cheeks.

_"Troy? Are you sure you are not mistaken? To come from a Trojan captive to a savage country's goddess is a far leap indeed."_

What have I become? She wonders. If not a priestess, then perhaps a warrior king's woman. If not his woman, then perhaps a mute. If not a mute, then perhaps a patroness of fortune. The charade goes onward, ever onward…

_"I am not mistaken, my lord Diomedes. I know her face. And…"_

_"Yes, Eudorus?"_

_"I mean no offence, my lord, but it would be best if no harm came to the woman. Lord Achilles was uncommonly protective of her."_

With all the confusion in her mind, the blackness that comes from within the overbearing white of the heat in that moment is more than she ever hoped for.

* * *

Achilles stands higher from the ravaged beach on the slope of a dune, surveying his damage.

The few remaining Carthaginian boats are cutting choppily through the unfamiliar water, abandoning soldiers, banners and weapons alike in an amusing desperation to put distance between themselves and the battle-hardened Greeks. For all their finery and war myths, the foreigners have proved to be a sad enemy indeed. Achilles feels no anxiety over a few worthless boats of would-be soldiers – he knows Nestor and Diomedes, in their quiet manipulating ways, will have the monarchs of Mycenae send a detachment of their own fleet after the cowards. Achilles refuses to give those who retreat the honour of his sword; he fights men and not worms. Let a lesser man take down such an enemy.

Eyes squinting against the familiar—and very welcome, in his mind—Greek sun, he glances around to take inventory of his men. They stand out in the crush of soldiers littering the beach; iron men amongst sticks. He is fiercely proud of the Myrmidons. Strangely, he cannot see Eudorus but Achilles pays it no mind. He knows his right hand would not fall in an insignificant battle such as this. His mind turns away.

Upon the sand near his feet, and spread all over the beach, are the forgotten Carthaginian banners. Shifting his stance casually, like a languorous lion walking his territory, Achilles regards the facial profile inked into cloth. It is drawn so as to be a pretty face, he reasons, his head cocked lightly. He listens to the sounds wafting their way over to him, as if they might carry an answer to his vague questions. His mind casts back to one of the faceless men he has slain today upon this very sand: _"For our lady Briseis…" _he said. Perhaps he misheard the man, Achilles reasons, but uneasily and unconsciously he knows that it isn't the case. Few are the times when he senses fail him, and in battle they are flawless—part of what has kept him alive, and so great. He did not mishear the man. So what does it mean?

Answers don't reach him, but the Myrmidons do.

"My lord…" one man begins, waiting for acknowledgement before continuing. Addressing Achilles is treated by all much like addressing a wild and dangerous animal: wait for a validation of cooperation before continuing.

Achilles doesn't meet his eyes, looking far out into the horizon and studying the fleeing ships of Carthage with a critical, suspicious eye. Eventually, in dissatisfaction, he raises his chin and cocks an eyebrow. His soldier continues, "My lord, shall we go after them?" By _them_, he means the enemy.

Rolling his shoulders back and sheathing his bloody sword, his lord answers, "No. Let the Mycenaeans clean up their mess. Have the Myrmidons return to camp." He looks back to the horizon, the distant look in his eyes a dismissal in itself, and the soldier begins to turn away after inclining his head. The words rolling off his tongue, Achilles adds, "Tell them they fought well today, Nikolas." From his stance, it looks almost as thought Achilles doesn't realize he is even talking.

His soldier, Nikolas, cracks a smile and inclines his head again in receipt of the compliment. "Thank you, my lord. I will tell them."

A nod. Then, a slightly puzzled look crosses Achilles' face for a moment, and he asks, "Where is Eudorus, Nikolas?"

After a quick perusal of the men on the beach, Nikolas turns back to his lord and says, "I understood that during the battle, King Diomedes wished to send you a message for a change in tactics. Eudorus went to the high tents to find out what it was. Did he not come to you, my lord?"

A pause. Then, "No. Not that a change in tactics was necessary to achieve this paltry win." A well-known smirk crosses his face, lascivious, dangerous. Achilles stabs at one of the abandoned banners with a nearby spear imbedded in the sand. Then he turns fully to his soldier, feet shifting. "I go to Diomedes, then. You know where to find me.

* * *

Stepping into Diomedes' battle tent is nothing like stepping into Agamemnon's. For one, the only reason behind a kings' gathering in Diomedes' tent is for reason of strategy…not for philandering and flattering and grovelling. There is also the matter of respect; primarily, Achilles does not only respect Diomedes, but is proud to call him a friend and councillor on occasion. So when Achilles walks into Diomedes' tent, he does not steel himself for battles of word and territory; in fact, he is genuinely smiling.

The king spots his entry immediately and stands from his position at a table. The two men grip each other's forearms firmly in greeting, and then turn to the map of the coast laid out on the table. Achilles allows the king to speak first, considering his words carefully.

"Look, the Carthaginians mean to flee back to their homeland the usual route…around Peloponnesus. I did, however, take the liberty of sending a runner to Sparta yesterday, and they will have their navy blocking the way around the coast, forcing them to return our way."

Taking out a short dagger and pointing with it, Achilles counters, "That is, of course, unless they try to force their way past or around the Spartan line."

Laughing, Diomedes says, "And? What does it matter if they die on this shore or in Spartan waters? I know _you_ won't bother fighting them should they come back—you'll leave it to us to clean up the job."

Achilles rubs his hand over the stubble lining his jaw and smiles. "You know me too well." He takes the goblet of watered wine offered to him by a young soldier made temporary servant and drinks deeply of it. His eyes glitter darkly, an after-effect of his time spent fighting today. All who know him know he will be aggressive and unforgiving today, as is his character—almost drunk off the battle and blood. "Well, Diomedes? Did you join us soldiers upon the sands?"

Sitting in a chair, Diomedes chuckles. "Would you respect me if I didn't?" He sighs suddenly. "Of course I fought, Achilles. It is a king's obligation is to expect no more of his soldiers then he does of himself. I don't enjoy it so much as you, to be sure."

After a gesture to the stitches upon the man's leg, Achilles questions, "And your wound?"

A dismissive gesture. "It is nothing." Then a smile, "Your man Eudorus had a hand in the stitching—he arrived at the right time."

Achilles puts down his goblet, half-full. "Yes, where is Eudorus? I looked for him after the battle. I heard you wanted a change in tactics. Not a wise decision, in the midst of the melee, Diomedes."

"Yes, well, it seems it proved unnecessary." Diomedes then slides to the edge of his seat, studying his friend for a moment. "Eudorus is waiting for you near the Myrmidon camp. He tells me…" He looks at Achilles slyly, with a smirk, "…that I have found something of yours."

With a discarded cloth, Achilles had begun to clean the blade of his sword. He stops and frowns, creating deep lines in his forehead as he regards the other king. His head cocked to the side, he asks, "Something of mine?"

A bright grin. "A wayward trinket, shall we say?"

Suddenly very tired, Achilles tosses the cloth away and is still for a moment. He pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes, and then points the tip of his sword at Diomedes, not five inches from his throat. "Play your riddles some other time, friend. What is it you mean?"

Finally Diomedes shrugs noncommittally, after a long pause. The blade before him is retracted and resheathed, Achilles' countenance no less hard. He should have known better than to provoke the man so soon after battle, he thinks offhand. Then says, "Go with Eudorus, and he will show you."

Achilles drinks deeply of the wine in his goblet, nods, and walks away. As he leaves, he calls back, "Until tomorrow then." He is gone before Diomedes can reply.

* * *

As if slowly leaving a dark forest thick and overgrown, consciousness descends upon Briseis. First are the sounds she hears—mumbled chatter of men, the noises made by tools and metal—and then she becomes aware of her surroundings by touch: she lies upon the ground, her face half-pressed into soft fabric, her skin cool from the shade. Then vision returns, a slightly more sickening sensation, as a false bright light pierces her eyes momentarily before settling into normal colours and brightness. Everything she sees has a bit of a washed-out, blue tinge, and Briseis remembers that she lost consciousness at the feet of men she did not know. Briseis does not have the strength to wonder where she has been placed now: it cannot be worse than her standing with the Carthaginians.

Gingerly, she sits up, resting most of her weight on her arms before moving to sit leaning against a wall…because her arms are shaking with weakness. It has been a long time since she last ate, and her time spent in the sun did her ill indeed. Her gaze falls idly upon a small ceramic vase visibly filled with water. She stares at it without thinking for a few moments, before leaning forward—and snatching it off the ground. Drinking deeply, Briseis falls back against the wall for a few moments, before wiping her lips and drinking again, slowly. She knows that it is dangerous to drink water too quickly after great dehydration.

Thus sated, if for the moment, she begins her study of her surroundings. A warrior's tent, Briseis now recognizes, larger than Achilles' upon the beach of Troy. She supposes that she has been placed here to be interrogated by one of the Greek lords about the Carthaginian invaders. The expected items, however—a washing basin, woven robes, an unfilled food platter—are clean from lack of use, and she supposes that this lord has not yet returned from the battleground.

The minutes of waiting pass slowly for her. She feels these moments almost mirror those she experiences tied in Achilles' tent prior to their meeting, although the difference in her emotions between then and now is marked. In Troy, though she felt resigned to her fate as a Greek captive, the terror that had pervaded her bones so deeply had made her prone to lash out. Now, Briseis feels she has little to lose; certainly not her faith, or her virginity anymore. At the very least, she thinks to herself in a vague whisper of her old humour, that disgusting pig of a king, Agamemnon, is not on this side of Styx to make her life a living hell. Briseis even contemplates leaving the tent and attempting escape, since this time she has been oddly left unattended without bonds, but to what end? Her best chances are with the Greek lord who would eventually return to his camp. The waiting, it seems to her, is punishment enough. It fills her with a feeling of powerlessness, of passivity…and all through her journey, however hard the circumstances; she always had some measure of movement, of control. No longer.

In time, a set of voices draws near. Men, naturally, their voices deep and gravely from exertion and shouting in battle. Strange, really, how much Briseis recognizes and knows of men since knowing Achilles. It was as though a whole half of her social education was missing before having a lover. She cannot understand what the voices are saying as they draw nearer and louder, the sound muffled by the walls of the tent and the barriers at the entrance. It is of little import anyway, she'll soon be hearing what needs to be heard from the lord. She sits, legs curled underneath her, and waits, eyes resting upon the door for the moment to come when a man will push through those stiff leather flaps and lay eyes on _her_.

But when that moment comes, despite how prepared Briseis believes she is, her heart nearly stops.

The sheen of sweat resting upon golden, muscled flesh.

The dull gleam of armour, streaks of dirt and blood disguising its true appearance.

The two hands, large and powerful, the calluses from swordplay visible.

A flash of twisted, golden hair lit by Apollo's gift of sunlight.

And the blue eyes, as if cast from the ocean, travelling slowly up her body to meet her gaze, the emotions and surprise within reflecting her own.

And that name, shouted as a mantra by thousands for the ordinary men of the world.

_Achilles_.

* * *

Well? 


	16. Love Part 2 of 2

**Love (2/2).**

_Disclaimer: See previous chapters; I hate being redundant.  
__Notes: See below, please._

_

* * *

_It is a thousand moments of blinding emotion eclipsed by the meeting of their eyes. Ten thousand memories and a riot of colour courses through and around her as Briseis' body physically processes the shock of this moment. Her skin feels almost cold and a lightly bitter taste finds its way into the back of her mouth; she doesn't know it, but it's the adrenaline flowing in her veins. Like the demigod so many believe him to be Achilles stands before her not even raised to his full height, he is frozen in mid-movement at the sight of her; and not just of her, but of her battered appearance, of the look in her eye—one the betrays her reaction to him and also hints at the difficult journey she has made. Briseis stares at his face, the handsome lines now as familiar as the memories of yesterday, almost trying to find a means of convincing herself that this man is, in fact, not Achilles—so used to disappointment and treachery is she. 

The truth of the matter is that it _is_ he. The feeling in her bones that is so impossible to articulate is really her recognition of the near-unbelievable fact that _this_ is the end of her journey. This is the end that she had dared not hope for. And so when he almost imperceptibly shifts his stance and the light from outside catches golden on his hair, it is as though the light of Apollo, sent from the heavens to her lover's hair to her eyes, is the tonic that gives her strength. Briseis finds it in her to shoot forward, though unsteady on her feet. Without willing to she falls to her knees before him, her arms wrapping around his waist and her forehead falling against the stomach of his armour. It is when Achilles finally regains some sense of himself from within his explosive sense of surprise and his hands softly move to touch her face that Briseis knows, without doubt, that is it _him_, and she weeps.

A moment passes in complete silence. His hands almost tremble, though he'd never admit it, when Achilles tenderly touches her face and runs his hands—slowly, very slowly, as though she might fall to wisps of vapour beneath his hands—into her hair.

Then he comes back to himself, back to his tent and his location and his men and the beaches of Mycenae, and Achilles realizes that his armour is stained with blood, the woman he loves is kneeling before him, and he w_ould not have it so_. Remembering his old and fabled strength despite this moment of uncharacteristic gentility, he hauls Briseis up off her knees to her feet with powerful arms; his left tightly wound around her waist and his right up in the riot of her dark hair, cradling the base of her neck as she cries quietly. Her tears dampen the skin covering his jugular vein—a delicate patch of a man who denies all delicacy in himself…_but to her_.

His arms tighten around her frame, and Achilles casts a single glance back over his shoulder. Through the slats of his tent and bathed in the blinding Greek sunlight, the blue eyes of Eudorus find his own and an understanding passes through them.

(Eudorus will never admit it to another man so long as he lives, nor when he finally crosses the ebony waters in Charon's boat, but what he saw in his lord's eyes in that moment was the greatest gift Achilles could have bestowed upon him. Never had he felt more a man that in that moment, when Achilles himself looked upon him thinking _thank you_, and they were men and they were equals to each other like no battlefield could have ever made them.)

They haven't spoken yet.

Achilles' hands are restless. Before any words, without thought his hands—with undeniable intimacy and then again with detached purpose—run over Briseis' smooth skin (_yes,_ how he remembers now that he allows himself to remember) and feels her bones everywhere in search of any injury. Dead, and worse, is the man who might lay harm to her, he thinks.

By touch he finds nothing, but Achilles' fingers come away with half-dried blood after touching her arm. He draws her away from him to look at her, holding her just a bit less than arms length away. He lets go—his hands fall away from her white shoulders—and then finally, finally! They truly see each other. Her tears stop, and softly, very softly, he takes her face in his hands like a priceless thing, and he looks at her in such a way that Briseis feels the gods have split her open so that he might know every facet of her—and she would never be happier. It is a stare more intimate than any kiss.

And then, that something breaks and he bends his head to her level, his brow furrowed, and Achilles says in quiet reverence, "By all the gods…" His eyes close softly.

When they open again, Briseis has calmed, her tears have dried upon the curves of her cheekbones, and her hands have come up to clasp his near her face. He then walks her backward to sit on his pallet; she perches on the edge with her tiny knees stuck together and her entire upper body leaned forward towards him. On his knees he is before her, staring, everything else forgotten.

Eventually, some of the romantic languor drops from his gaze and Achilles begins to resemble something his soldiers might recognize. His head cocks to the side slightly, and he asks quickly, carefully, "How have you come to be here?"

Briseis' brows come together and she knows her eyes will tear any moment, not because of his question but just because it's _him_, and she responds in kind, almost brokenly, "How is it that you are alive?" Then she goes further: "If you were to live, why would you send me away with Paris?"

With great softness he takes both her hands, drowning them in his larger one, and presses them fiercely to his mouth, his eyes bright and strong. He says, with a hint of a smile, "Let us say that I owe Odysseus of Ithaca a great many things." Then, seriously: "I should have died, and yet I am here. That is the nature of it."

As he speaks, Briseis' eyes grow brighter, as if energized by him like he was another sun. The feeling in her chest that has plagued her so shifts into something almost giddy. "Athena favours you, you know—"

With a quick laugh Achilles drops his head for a moment, and then meets her expectant eyes again. "I think it has little to do with Athena and more to do with a good healer."

She almost has the heart to look scandalized at his continuing mockery of the gods, as if they had not been separated a day, when all her memories return to her. It shows in her eyes, the sobering remembrance, and Achilles feels it too as he witnesses it washing over her. He asks her again, "How have you come to be _here_, Briseis?"

Words and memories, friends and enemies wash over her in a great deluge that she cannot verbalize: _you—Carthage—luck—Paris—silence…_It's a hard tale to tell, with the pain so fresh and cut from the quick. Amidst it all, however, it strikes Briseis that if such a difficult and winding journey might end here, in this tent, in this man's arms, she'd not regret it for a single moment.

_No regrets_, Hector used to tell her. ("I've killed men," he said to her in great honesty when he'd felt she was old enough to hear it. "I've seen their faces, watched them die, and though it's hard I don't regret it. I come home to you," his brown eyes war upon her with his affection, "and to Paris," his little brother hiding behind a stone pillar, listening to their conversation, and Hector grinning because he is not fooled, "and to my beautiful wife Andromache…" _Andromache_, who glides towards them in a vision of serenity and smiles and fragile beauty.) _No regrets_.

A corner of her mouth curves upward, and seeing that warms Achilles, adds sparkle to his eyes while he watches her from under tawny golden hair. She meets his eyes, and then mumbles, "It's a very long story…"

His own smile matches hers, and he says, "One you'll be telling me." His eyes are expectant, lightly prodding.

Briseis smiles, a full and true smile, and says, "Yes." _It's a story for you_, she thinks, _the story begins and ends…with you_.

* * *

She takes her time telling him, now secure in the safety of his protection. Much to her own surprise, Briseis almost enjoys telling him her story—despite the probing questions he asks of her from time to time, or even the playfully doubtful glint in his eyes at certain unbelievable points (her first meeting with the Carthaginians, for example). It's almost like a very gentle form of making love, this quiet push and pull that her tale creates between them. She sits very close to him, savouring his heat, and her face alight with the memories her stories bring. Achilles watches her very carefully, and so very intensely when she's not watching him, trying to discern if any hurt has befallen her, and he keeps his fingers lightly stroking upon her skin, examining her reaction. But she enjoys it, she enjoys ­_everything_…especially telling it all to him. 

Briseis feels that this joy she feels will help—that perhaps, if she lets her joy at reunion and her love for this man fill her and her tale that it might transfer over to Paris and Andromache and Aeneas and Astyanax wherever they might be, and save them. That it might wend its way to Hector and Priam and so many others beyond the river Styx and bring them back to life, if only in the form of vivacious words.

When she finishes telling him of her travels and trials with the Carthaginians, Achilles' face hardens briefly into an expression she remembers as well as that soft and tender one which he uses to look upon her. Briseis thinks of both with great love and affection, because now that she understands and has experienced hardship and war and also love and passion, she knows that both sides of this great man that she loves are necessary ones. Achilles would not be Achilles without his strength and power, and Achilles would not be Achilles without the love he shows to her.

"And to think," he says with a bit of an amiable smirk, "that I was going to allow Diomedes to chase after these foolish heathens all by himself." Achilles touches her jaw softly with a roughened hand briefly, and then rises. "Excuse me a moment."

She watches him push pass the slats of his tent to speak with the man Briseis knows as Eudorus. Achilles barks orders with confidence sending emissaries to Diomedes to inform the king of his change of plans, and then he asks for some food. Squinting into the hot sun as he waits, Achilles smiles as he recalls Briseis' fondness for fruit, and less so for meats. He shakes his head.

When a platter arrives, Achilles takes it from his man and walks back into his tent, crouching to the ground before his lady. Briseis smiles, and says with unrestrained fervour, "Oh, thank the _gods_…I'm starving half to _death…_"

He laughs as he sits, answering, "No, no, not the gods…these are only rations brought along from Phtia." An interesting shade colours his eyes, and Achilles says, "You'd best get used to asking things from my men."

Briseis very swiftly picks up a large sprig of grapes, and as she eats, she asks playfully, "And why is that?"

"Well…" he says, catching her eyes, "…provided you have no objection—and I know that you so often _do_…" she throws the rest of her grapes at him and Achilles catches them in one hand easily, "…I would not have my wife be timid and afraid of my soldiers."

Their eyes catch, his deceptively casual and amused, hers very intent. Then, a bit of a smirk quirks upon her lips, and Briseis says, "Indeed, I have no objection, because a great warrior such as yourself having a pathetically boring and timid wife would be very grievous. You should be thankful I'm here to save you from such a fate."

There is a very loving tender moment between them, and Achilles' smile grows. His arms flex impressively as his hand tangles softly in her hair, slowly stroking. His eyes are warm. "There she is." Briseis cocks her head just slightly, and he adds, "There's my girl. I was wondering where you'd gotten off to."

Her own smile grows as she crawls into his lap, and Achilles leans back against the wood support of his tent, looking much like a contented, purring lion. Briseis leans her head on his chest, and she whispers, "Oh, I didn't go very far…it was just a bit complicated finding my way back to you."

Achilles says nothing to this, only strokes his fingers through her hair again and again, savouring her and her jasmine scent and her soft touches…very quietly, he admits his weakness for her aloud: "Yes…I am very thankful you are here." Then, he glances at the platter, and pushes her to eat more.

It is a funny moment, for Briseis, when she looks upon the outlaid food again and finally spies the uncut pomegranate. She nearly is overcome with laughter for a few seconds, and then feels weighted with what has passed since the last time she beheld the fruit. But that is only for a few seconds, and then Briseis feels joy, and happiness, and she looks forward to telling her story to the next person who asks it of her.

Telling stories about these people whom she loves and loved brings them back to life. Briseis has watched soldiers do it, watched members of her family tell stories with an urgency she never understood—but now she does. Talking about these people makes them seem alive, so alive that it might as well be true. Her memories will fade with time, and her stories might become exaggerated, but it doesn't matter. The stories and the words, will keep Hector and Paris and Helen and Andromache and every other name alive.

In life, love and in telling stories, the dead and the gone live.

Eat, he says, and offers her pomegranate. Is it chance, fate, luck, that she should be brought back to this moment? Briseis thinks not.

* * *

**Final Notes:**

_Pomegranate _was originally conceived as a oneshot – i.e.: only the first chapter. However, I haven't yet achieved the talent of writing a whole world into a single instalment, and so this multichapter story was started. I am truly sorry it took me over a year to crank out a mere fifteen chapters. Similarly, I regret that I took so long to post this final chapter, but I wanted to achieve a written end that satisfied me and not only the readers.

Regarding the _Iliad_: During a few months of this writing, I was taking yet another course involving the Greek myths. This course introduced me to the most amazing professor I've ever encountered – a man who unknowingly both inspired me to continue this story, as well as humbled me for even daring to alter its events. I am still slightly uncomfortable with having changed Achilles' fate…and I gladly take any flaming from strict Homer fans.

_Thanks_: I can't write out all the names, but please know that I've read every review and I thank you all, especially those who offered advice for improvement. I really hope I haven't disappointed anybody.

Anything else? If you have a question, you can either write it in a review and I'll respond in kind, or send me an e-mail. Otherwise, thanks for all the support…everybody.

Coda


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